


A Whole Lot Of Something

by JustJasper



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-26 04:31:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 77
Words: 23,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3837202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustJasper/pseuds/JustJasper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short ficlets originally written for tumblr (fic memes, random musing etc). Primarily Bull/Dorian, with some other Bull and Dorian related gen and ships thrown in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 3 words

**Author's Note:**

> Reblog this drabble on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/116550663495/)

Bull wakes to Dorian beside him in the bed, brown skin of his back and side so inviting in the morning light, hair slightly damp and curly, and even though he can’t see it from this angle he knows his moustache is askew and fluffy. Dorian groans like a waking cat, feet pressing along Bull’s calf as he stretches, fighting to stay in the peace of near-sleep.

Bull almost says it then, three words that could change everything.

Instead he turns as carefully as his size will allow onto his side, resting on an elbow, and skims his fingers along the man’s ribcage. Dorian makes a sleepy sound of protest, one arm moving to fumble blindly for his hand; when he grabs it he pull’s Bull arm around him, shuffling back against his chest. Bull’s good at taking hints, so he eases his arm  along the man’s chest, and presses his leg up, half covering the smaller man with his body.

Dorian sighs contentedly and Bull has to again stop the words that want to form on his tongue, that might ruin everything.


	2. jawline kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog drabble on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/116341891345/)

Once, before they had tumbled into bed together, Dorian had considered the possibility that Bull would not want to kiss him. After all, Bull had talked willingly about the utilitarianism of sex under the Qun, and of his many sexual conquests, none of which had involved explicit mention of kisses. 

The idea now seemed utterly foolish; The Iron Bull had never hesitated to kiss him. He couldn’t get enough of kissing him, in fact, which suited Dorian fine. 

“You should grow a beard,” Bull muttered in the quiet of their shared tent, pushing his stubbly jaw against Dorian’s own, which was covered in uncharacteristic hair. “You’d look dashing.”

“I’m dashing enough.” Dorian shifted in Bull’s lap, but he responded to the touch by mirroring it, and all that was missing from the cat-like gesture was purring.

“You could be more dashing,” Bull went on, kissing the spot where neck became jaw.

“Could the world stand me being more handsome? Perhaps another breach would open in the sky at the mere sight of me?” he breathed lazily, as Bull kissed slowly along towards his chin.

“Worth it, probably.”

“For now,” Dorian whispered, as Bull used the tiniest scrape of teeth against the line of his jaw, “I’d like to give you stubble-burn in places you won’t forget, see how much you enjoy it.”

Bull laughed, soft and rumbling in his chest, knowing full well how much Dorian enjoyed the ache of prickling facial hair against his inner thighs.


	3. jawline kiss (krem/dorian)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/116334602060/)

“Stop wiggling, Pavus,” Krem said, glaring down at the other man with all the subtle menace he could manage. Difficult, really, that despite everything their history and circumstance should inform, Dorian was a hard man to hate. Much too slippery, much too pretty.

“Why don’t you make me?” It was clearly a challenge, the man’s eyes sparkling with mischief. Damn if that didn’t do it for Krem, the smugness all his own signature, nothing like the caricature atlus son of a magister he’d once pegged him for.

The moment he took to appreciate the heavy-lidded look was a moment too long, because Dorian grabbed the back of his neck and used the leverage to pull himself up and nip - hard - at Krem’s jaw. As the man gasped the other soothed the spot with a kiss, tender, with tongue and a laugh in his chest.

“Make me,” Dorian said against his jaw, so Krem shoved him back down flat on his back and set about it.


	4. daddy issues (dorian gen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/117547527655/dorian-daddy-issues)

The trouble is, of course, is none of his friends really get it. Not Josephine, a fellow noble, or Vivienne, who has steeped herself in it for most of her life. They don’t understand that by the measure that he knew as truth for most of his life, Halward Pavus is a good man.

He didn’t practice blood magic, didn’t torture or brand his slaves or whore them out to visiting peers, didn’t beat his wife, gave to charity, patroned the arts, was endlessly patient with a rebellious teenage son.

It makes it worse, that he still can’t help thinking of his father as  _good_. If he’d treated the family’s slaves worse, Dorian could denounce it outright, with no urge to hand-wave it away, though he’d long since given up that cop-out.

If he’d practised blood magic as routine, maybe Dorian wouldn’t still wake up some nights suffocating in the smell of copper and iron. If he’d been cruel, the very worst cruelty he’d ever inflicted might have lost some of it’s impact in comparison.

Dorian has new measures now, and he knows that Halward Pavus is a terrible man and an awful father. Perhaps it will stop hurting when he can no longer comprehend the old system, when everything about it is bad instead of levels of terrible Tevinter shit, with his father a good man by merit of how much worse it could have been.


	5. before the beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is set before the start of [As Much Power As A Word](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3784390/chapters/8417878)
> 
> reblog on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/117037621915/before-the-beginning)

“So this is essentially a Chargers bonding trip?” Dorian asked, lying naked and freshly fucked on the Iron Bull’s bed, while he sat at his work table sorting supplies into a pack.

“My team has earned it,” he said, without looking round.

“Quite,” Dorian waved his hand even though Bull couldn’t see it, because he did agree with that. They’d become a staple resource of the Inquisition. “But the Hissing Wastes? What fun bonding things are there to do there? Build sandcastles?”

“You’d need wet sand for that,” Bull noted. “We’re only going to the edge, I’ve got a few leads on jobs in the area. Trust me, they’ll enjoy it.”

“If you say so,” Dorian sighed, stretching luxuriously as he watched Bull work nearby. “Do try come back in one piece, won’t you? I’d hate to have to go to the trouble of finding a cock as nice as yours again.”

Bull turned his head to grin at him, just like Dorian had hoped. If they weren’t going to see each other for weeks on end, he intended to make the most of the man while he had his attention.


	6. mount is an innuendo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/113966472054/mount-is-an-innuendo)

They make it out of the skirmish in the Western Approach with only one injury: Dorian’s horse takes an arrow to the flank. They make it to the closest established hold, and one of the soldiers there assures them the wound is minor, but the horse shouldn’t ride or the leg will end up lame. 

Sera gets up in the personal space of the well-meaning soldier, threatening him with all manner of creative things if he doesn’t tend properly to the horse, and before she can do any real damage the Inquisitor pulls her away by the collar while cheerily offering apologies. 

Dorian, now mount-less, is incredulous at the proposal for him to ride behind the Iron Bull. The strange horned nuggalope looks like it can easily take both of them, but he’s offended by the sheer indignity of it. 

Not that he gets to protest for long, because they have places to be, but it’s even worse when Bull urges him to side in front of him instead of behind, enabling them both to see in a way that wouldn’t be possible if Dorian was clinging to his back. 

However, several miles later, as their pelvises repeatedly bump together in a rhythmic roll with the stride of the mount, Dorian wonders if this wasn’t actually a completely sordid and genius spur of the moment idea of his lover’s. The large hand that spreads out over his belly and inches lower confirms it, and Dorian leans back into the warm shape of the Iron Bull.


	7. fools in love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/113951679800/fools-in-love)

“Don’t do that ever again.” Bull’s voice is hushed within the confines of their tent, but angry.

Dorian scowls at him, turning gingerly in his spot amongst his sleeping kit, mindful of his arm in a sling. “What, stop you getting a mace in the back?”

“Being an idiot,” Bull snaps at him as he drops down to be on the same level, voice still kept low but losing nothing of its anger. “I’ve taken hits before, Dorian, I’m built to take them.”

“And I am no brittle twig,” Dorian hisses back.

“Your arm is broken.”

“And your back isn’t cleaved to reveal your spine to the open air!” he says indignantly, and it’s a vivid enough picture to make Bull stop, pull back, and huff a breath out of his nose.

“It was a stupid move.”

“I’d do it again,” Dorian says defiantly.

Bull is thrumming with anger and with a subtle kind of terror, but instead of fighting he leans into Dorian’s space and kisses him hard on the mouth. Dorian melts into it, weaves his good arm around his neck and pulls him close.

“Fucking fool,” Bull mutters against his mouth, and Dorian nods some kind of agreement as he pulls Bull on top of him.


	8. my only weakness is knowing your secrets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog drabble on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/113937759448/my-only-weakness-is-knowing-your-secrets)

The Iron Bull bought his axe down on the giant’s throat, and it gave a final shudder and stilled. He pulled his weapon loose and leant his weight on the haft, catching his breath and grinning around at the rest of the group. The air of breathless pride faded as eyes fell upon him, or more accurately, a little way above him. 

“Do I have giant gizzards on my horns again?” he asked, shaking his head to rattle any stringy bits loose, but the faces did not change. 

“You horn,” Cassandra grimaced, and he reached up with both hands. The left horn ended where he expected, but the right did not; in place of the pointed tip was a jagged, broken edge, and he felt his heart sink with an almost inevitable sadness.

Bull had realised he’d taken a blow, but he hadn’t realised it had broken. Amongst the debris of the fight he found splinters of horn, and and intact piece of the very tip the size of a knuckle, but it was hopeless.

“We could powder it,” Dorian said in jest later in their shared tent, as Bull studied the damage in a borrowed hand mirror, “sell it in Val Royeaux. They think it’s an aphrodisiac.”

Bull didn’t laugh, and Dorian shuffled around to lean his chin on his shoulder, catching his eye in the mirror.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You should consider having it capped in metal, to protect the broken end.”

“Yeah,” Bull sighed, setting down the mirror and taking up the small pouch containing the splintered pieces of his horn, just to hold them in his hand. “I’m surprised they’ve stayed in one piece this long,” he said, even though the inevitability didn’t make the disappointment any less.

“I’m just glad it wasn’t your head,” Dorian assures him, kissing his shoulder. He managed a smile at that.

A few months later it didn’t hurt to recall the loss, accustomed to the new metal that made up the lost section of his horn. Surviving virtually intact really had been better. He hung onto the broken pieces though, unwilling to let them go, but mostly unwilling to take them out of the pouch they’d been in since the incident, a constant reminder of his potential for fragility.

Inspiration struck months after that, and he gave to Dorian a ring with the broken tip fixed at the centre, smoothed out and polished but unmistakeable to him what it was. A weakness, turned into something treasured, upon the hand he trusted most.


	9. secret tongues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog drabble on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/113926468935/secret-tongues)

The first time Dorian neglects to realise the Iron Bull speaks Tevene, it’s climbing a muddy bank in the Hinterlands and muttering about how Bull ought to make himself useful as a beast of burden and carry him.

“You only have to ask if you want to ride the Bull,” he says, and he’s sure the heat radiating from Dorian’s face can be felt across the Frostbacks. 

The last time Dorian forgets the Iron Bull speaks Tevene, it’s gone midnight in the balmy night of the Forbidden Oasis, curled up in a tent and whispering a confession into a space where he thinks only he is awake.

“I love you too,” Bull murmurs back, “sleep, kadan.”

Dorian hugs himself around Bull’s side and his shuddering sigh seems to release every ounce of tension he’d been holding.


	10. the last of days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog drabble on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/113876384220/the-last-of-days)

Dorian has been unconscious for five days, and the Iron Bull has been at his bedside in the infirmary for all of them. He hasn’t slept in all that time. It’s not the longest he’s gone, but it’s definitely the worst. He’s having auditory hallucinations by the fifth day, resolutely ignoring the persistent scratching and barking he knows isn’t really at the door. Madness, he thinks, may be preferable to a world where Dorian doesn’t wake up. 

Krem comes by early in the morning of day six to actually try to physically subdue him into unconsciousness. The lad makes a good effort, but leaves with bruised ribs. Later the same day, his body betrays him, and he finally passes out in the chair by Dorian’s bed. 

When Bull wakes he blinks blearily, terrified that he’s slept too long, that he’ll be gone already. Dorian is still lying on the cot; pale, sickly, but  _glaring_ at him with weak annoyance, and Bull begins to laugh with relief just as tears escape him.


	11. honeysuckle for devotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog drabble on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/113782534805/honeysuckle-for-devotion)

Dorian brings him flowers. The Iron Bull is a little surprised to see the man turn up at his door with an armful of blooms, but he bustles inside and insists it’s because his room is a dingy little hovel that needs something – anything – to make it seem liveable if he’s going to be spending any amount of them there, it’s all for his own personal benefit, really.

Bull watches with amusement as Dorian arranges the blooms in the vase he also brought with him, and wonders if Dorian has any inkling that it’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for him.


	12. anagapesis (dorian gen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anagapesis - The feeling when one no longer loves someone they once did.
> 
> reblog drabble on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/113635007790/anagapesis)

Common wisdom would have it that no matter what they did or how badly they hurt you, you always loved you parents, even if you hated them.

Dorian thought such wisdom to be utter bunk. It was a comfort most days, to not love his father, and such things were said by people whose ties to their kin were frayed, but had never truly known a hurt that could not be tended. 

Time gave practice at putting it away in a place where it could not readily claw at him, but it was a thing still as vicious and deadly as the day it had been born, in blood and metal and stone. 

Love is too strong a connection, and he would not survive being tethered to that howling, biting, scathing pain, if every time he remembered such cruelty he had to remember that he loved the one who had visited it upon him.

Love could be a burden.


	13. cataglottism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cataglottism - Kissing with tongue
> 
> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/118559798990/)

One day in the future he’ll actually feel fundamentally guilty for it, but when The Iron Bull plants the seed of possibility in his mind that the open door was a real offer and not just inconsequential flirting, he never once thinks about how Bull will kiss him.

He thinks about a lot of other things the qunari might do, including a few with his mouth and tongue, but kissing is not one. So when he flinches the first time, its just the shock of it. He expected a quick fuck, nothing quite like the spectre of affection he gets.

“Do you want this?” Bull says, eyes dark, but voice steady. Dorian is the comfortable side of tipsy, several drinks in both of them, but he wants it so much. He nods and surges up, pressing their mouths together.

The Iron Bull wants to  _kiss him_ , not just fuck him, and that thought shouldn’t make his body react more strongly that the sex that’s just on the horizon, but it does. He opens his mouth and swipes his tongue out, inviting Bull’s into his mouth, to crowd his own, to enter, to conquer like he suggested on a cold morning in the Emprise.

Bull doesn’t disappoint, licking into his mouth and kissing Dorian in a way that would make his knees week, if he wasn’t hoisted against Bull’s door with his legs around his middle already. He pushes past the whine of admitting to himself he has never been kissed like this, had never knew he was missing what it felt like to be matched, anticipated, to truly want to give in to it.

As Bull twists their tongues together, he surrenders the last of his reserve and turns the kiss fierce.


	14. strikhedonia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Strikhedonia - The pleasure of being able to say “to hell with it”
> 
> reblog drabble on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/118564966780/strikhedonia)

“The rumours, Dorian,” Halward implores as Dorian and the Inquisitor make for the door. “If you do not care for your family’s honour, then surely you care for your own. These rumours cannot be true.”

“What rumours are those?” he asks, pausing at the door to the tavern.

“A qunari.” The word sounds like it causes Halward pain to say it.

“Oh,” Dorian finds himself laughing, the tension draining from him with the thrill of realising that his father knows that. “He’s the biggest qunari you’ve ever _seen_ , father.”

With that he steps out from the dimness of the tavern and into the bright light of the day.


	15. mamihlapinatapei

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mamihlapinatapei - The look between two people in which each loves the other but is too afraid to make the first move
> 
> reblog drabble on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/118566814755/mamihlapinatapei)

“It settles in the belly like hot cocoa; lingering, longing, lamenting. Is this what love feels like?”

“Kid?” Varric asks, looking up from his notes. Cole is sat beside him, but he’s watching Iron Bull sharpen his axe across the camp, who in turn is watching Dorian practice motions with his staff.

“He can’t name it, was never taught it. The first time he learned about it was from a girl who lifted her skirts and told him about her absent lover as he made her feel good. She couldn’t think of him ever being that, and The Iron Bull knew it.”

Varric sighs, because it’s not as if what Cole is saying is news to him, or to any of them, probably. And at least Cole isn’t doing it within earshot of either of them, forcing a confrontation, though sometimes he wonders if that wouldn’t just be the best plan.

“He knows, but he’s not sure,” Cole goes on, but his eyes have slid toward Dorian now. “He doesn’t think he sees what he is underneath, that if he did he wouldn’t want him to stay, would not want to know the Dorian who still dreams. Copper and iron, cold and dark. Kadan. Katoh. Sometimes he wants to say one in reply to the other.”

Cole sighs, and turns back towards Varric, looking worried and confused.

“If it hurts them to keep it inside, why don’t they say it? People should say things.”

“They should, kid,” Varric tells him, squeezing his shoulder. “But they’ve got to work out when they do that for themselves.”


	16. brontide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brontide - The low rumbling of distant thunder
> 
> reblog on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/119362989185/brontide)

Dorian can  _feel_ it, when a storm is going to roll in. Vivienne gets it too, and he’d asked Solas about it once, but the man had looked at him as if - and Dorian realises what it seemed like later - he’d just asked him a racist question about elfish powers. But he’s never seen Solas cast with lightning, not like he and Vivienne can, so maybe that magic has something to do with it. He hums with the distant power of it, gets the taste of the electricity on the air as it comes closer, and recalls the tales of the storm chasers of old.

The thunder reminds Iron Bull of Seheron, briefly, and for a moment there’s phantom pain where he used to have fingers before that damned place. Mostly he doesn’t mind, except the time it storms in the Arbor Wilds, where the canopy is not as oppressive but similar enough to the jungles of Seheron to make his skin crawl and his whole body put itself on alert. Then it’s on them and it’s wet, hot, and soon enough there’s blood in his vision as they cut down red templars, and if he thinks for too long he’ll want to crawl out of his skin.

They’re right under the storm after they’ve beat Samson to a pulp and Cadash has wisely - or stupidly, depending who you ask - let Morrigan drink from the ancient and probably dangerous well. The rain is coming down in torrent on the forward party as they make their way out of the jungle, lightning proceeding the crash of thunder from high above, so close it shakes the ground. 

In step beside him, Bull can feel Dorian thrumming with post-battle energy, sparks occasionally crackling at the end of his staff. He likes the storm, Bull knows, and not for the first time he wonders if there’s a kind of magic in them. It’s surprising, if he thinks about it, that those little bursts of magic don’t make him nervous. If anything, seeing the effect the storm has on the mage offsets some of the low level anxiety the weather causes in him, caught up in the fascination of there being something else in the world that can make him even slightly lose his control, akin the the ways Iron Bull has got so good at.

Dorian knows enough in passing about Seheron to know that the wet heat of a storm in a jungle isn’t going to be Bull’s favourite scenario. He’s not careful with him, because gentle hands are a private thing, but he talks. Talks about nothing, about dry Minrathous summers and cold adventures in the Emprise. He makes no attempt to quell the fluctuating magic that makes his staff buzz with electricity, or sometimes crackle between his fingers, because it’s something Bull can focus on. Even if it’s worry, and he’s increasingly less sure that it is, it’s something that isn’t a fucking awful memory he can do nothing to take from the Bull.

The storm rolls along with them as they make it out of the jungle, then eases away, taking memory and sensation with it.


	17. gymnophoria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gymnophoria - The sensation that someone is mentally undressing you
> 
> reblog on tumblr: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/119397877300/gymnophoria)

Iron Bull is well aware of the way people look at him, long before Cole informs him at random intervals that people imagine him undressing them, undressing him, and all the other things Cole describes in his way, which is something between spirit-y non-human naivety, and detached observation.

He’s pretty sure Dorian was imagining him like that the first time they met. The lingering gaze gave him away, as it did a lot of people, and it didn’t really matter, since soon after everything got  _weird_ with time magic and related crap.

For all Dorian’s loud questioning about him being a Ben-Hasrath, with every failed attempt to bait Bull into confirming what he supposed he knew about qunari, Bull knew Dorian was looking at him in a naked way. It was always the same with ‘vints, who got brought up on stories of qunari’s wild, rampant sexual conquesting, the tales veering between lewd tales for titillation, and harrowing stories as a warning.

Made no difference to Bull, to be looked at like a curiosity or a fetish. He could use that, if he needed to, whether as a means into bed or a tool to use to shut down an attempt at his life. He still wasn’t entirely sure which possibility the mage was entertaining, but he hoped it was the more fun one.


	18. apodyopis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apodyopis - The act of mentally undressing someone
> 
> reblog: [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/119401034540/apodyopis)

The first time Dorian saw a qunari was in a dirty book full of drawings of them fucking humans. Exaggerated muscles, bulging horns, pendulous breasts, great heaving cocks - the works. The little book was passed around the boys in the Circle, who marvelled  with a sort of morbid fascination. That was about the age when he really started hearing rumours about a race that had been described up until that point as simple and animalistic, brutish and dangerous. Now there were stories of unbridled lust and appetite to add to the pile.

Dorian wasn’t stupid, though, and grew out of his youthful fascination with such things, came to understand the idea of propaganda and portrayal of the enemy. Still, the spectre of qunari sexuality remained even as boys turned into men, and schooltime gossip became social chatter. He’d heard there was a growing trend for qunari body slaves, though the practice was kept behind closed doors, lest the situation upset the delicate political slatemate Tevinter and Par Vollen were in.

As soon as he sees The Iron Bull, he thinks of that crude pornography and those scandalising rumours. He’s bigger than any qunari he’s ever seen, all muscle and scars and those  _horns_ , and before he can help himself he’s wondering how he sizes up to those dirty pictures passed around the Circle students. His brain signals danger, but intrigue too, and it absolutely doesn’t help when Iron Bull turns out to be nothing like he expected. The qunari should hate him, or at least be casually hostile to the Tevinter mage in his midst, but he isn’t. He doesn’t snap back at Dorian’s increasingly unsubtle attempts to get some kind of reaction out of him, doesn’t even insult Tevinter with any real hostility. 

Before, it was just thinking about him naked and foreign and strange, until it became something else, until he wanted to learn everything those smutty pictures could never tell him, wanted a familiarity they could never give him. He wanted him naked and he wanted to  _know_ him. Part of him - the very Tevinter part - was horrified at himself, and another delighted to revel in something that would rankle every git he’d left before in a homeland that didn’t want him.


	19. duende

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duende - Unusual power to attract or charm
> 
> [reblog link](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/120786068125/duende)

Dorian gets it - he’s been fucking the Iron Bull for nearly a year, now - but he’s surprised that other people seem to  _get it_  to. That is to say, that it’s a surprise how many people are entirely wary of qunari, but are more than ready to jump Bull’s bones.

There’s the templar with the long hair who Dorian watched nastily throw ‘oxman’ at Bull during a group training session when Bull blocked his attack. Dorian only refrained from setting his ponytail on fire because Cullen, who had seemed to get very good at shouting in the past months, had already grabbed him by the collar and was putting the fear of the Maker into him. That same templar, a couple of months later, is making eyes at him in the Herald’s Rest. Bull ignores him, and soon distracts Dorian from paying him any mind too.

Then there’s the elf stable hand, who is certainly far from age of majority, who takes a keen and obvious shine to Bull. It’s kind of sweet, even though he can’t imagine what is going through the girl’s mind when Iron Bull is literally twice her height and four times as wide. People start whispering, and Dorian is furious that anyone would possibly believe that Bull had any interest in bedding a  _child_. Before he can take it upon himself to talk to her, or to Bull, it seems to be over. She’s still around, but now when she greets Bull there’s no curious adolescent desire radiating from her, only cheerful friendliness. He thinks Bull must have talked to her himself, and wonders what he said that put a stop to it without causing a scene.

Even the visiting Orlesians will insult Bull within earshot, apparently thinking him too dim to even process their words, and then approach him to ask him to tumble them, or to attempt to buy his time. It’s laughable really, completely ridiculous, but it  _keeps_  happening.

The Iron Bull could fuck a good majority of the people at Skyhold between those that have shown keen interest, and those who might have been up for it if the opportunity arose. They’ve made no declarations of monogamy, except that Bull’s inaction feels like a declaration of itself. He doesn’t take anyone else to bed, he doesn’t have any new stories of nights of passion, and even the flirting is not as outrageous as it once was. 

Dorian wonders, he hopes, however foolish that is, that instead of Bull merely not wishing to upset the balance, he truly only wants Dorian in his bed. He can’t bring himself to ask, not yet, maybe not ever, so instead he just enjoys whatever time he has Iron Bull all to himself.


	20. basorexia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Basorexia - An overwhelming desire to kiss
> 
> [reblog](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/120793665720/ooh-basorexia)

He could kiss him. Bull could pull Dorian onto his lap and kiss him right there in the middle of the Herald’s Rest. The Chargers would shout and tease, and a few people might look to the commotion, but nobody would dare to say a thing even if they had any desire to. He’d be kissing Dorian in the open, showing him he was allowed to have it, allowed to live in the light like he deserves. Though knowledge that Dorian has never had that actually aches.

He doesn’t do it, for obvious reasons; Dorian is setting the pace, and they’re not nearly there yet. Bull isn’t sure they will ever get there in whatever time they have, but he can’t help but hope. It’s a strange feeling, when he’s always been quite happy to be as covert as his bedpartners wanted, as subtle as they needed. 

He  _wants_ to kiss Dorian. The man kisses with everything he has, even when it’s gentle it’s absolute; fingers cradling his scalp or his neck, body pressed into the shape of his, mouth soft and skilled, moustache ticklish, and not a drop of hesitation in him. Bull wants that here, wants Dorian to be unafraid of being that open in a warm little pub up a frozen mountain.

For now, he’s content for the little smiles, and the tiny touches Dorian gives in public; a knee pressed against his under the table, fingers brushing the back of his hand when he passes him bear. That feel like a blessing, really does make Bull feel like he should be thanking some ancient power for the gift of them. He’ll  _pray_ later, though he’s not entirely sure when he started thinking of having Dorian in his bed as worship.


	21. gargalesthesia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gargalesthesia - The sensation caused by tickling
> 
>  
> 
> [reblog](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/120798252850/gargalesthesia)

“When did you grow a moustache?”

Bull could feel the soft hairs against his chest, just still damp and completely unstyled, and Dorian didn’t seem to care an ounce at that moment.

“A few years ago. They were pointedly out of fashion then, but I have never been one for following the crowd.”

“It’s so fluffy,” Bull cooed, and Dorian nuzzled it against his chest, eyes darting up to meet his. “Would you believe me if I said that learning not to be ticklish was part of Ben-Hassrath training?”

“No.”

“It is. Well, it’s a by-product of the training.”

“Why on earth would you need to avoid being tickled?”

“Tickling can be torture.”

Dorian snorted. “Sounds positively Orlesian.”

“Nah, that’s something a bit more fun.” Bull leaned so he could kiss Dorian, feeling his fluffy moustache against his lips. “Next time we’re in Val Royeaux, I’ll show you.”


	22. baisemain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baisemain - A kiss on the hand
> 
>  
> 
> [reblog](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/120803097630/baisemain)

One moment they’re fighting a very angry giant, its huge fist swinging back in an arc, and the next everyone is leaping out of the way of the blow. Dorian hears it connect as he rolls to stand, because like usual he’d ended up in melee distance to tap a weakness instead of sharp-shoot from higher ground, and thinks it must be Cassandra’s shield. It’s a final attempt by the giant to fend them off, to crush them into the dirt,  and it fails. It sinks to its knees and Cassandra and Cadash need only carve the killing blow into it, with Bull-

Bull is gone.

Dorian whips around, but he’s nowhere to be seen. It’s with a sickening, lurching sensation at his core that he begins to rush over to the crest of the hill they’d been fighting on, and many feet below, down a rocky, gravelly steep slope lies the Iron Bull, quite still.

“Bull!” he yells, and quite stupidly launches himself down the slope in his wake, which hurts a lot, but his armour keeps the rocks from cutting his skin. Bull hasn’t fared so well, his chest a mess of bloody grazes and cuts, things that he’d have counted as minor for Bull if he wasn’t unconscious.

And it was definitely unconscious, not dead - oh please Maker not dead - Dorian would be able to feel it if he was dead, and he’s breathing when he reaches him.

“Bull!”

He can hear Cassandra and Cadash making their way down the slope after him as he sends up a silent prayer that the man hasn’t broken his spine. There’s a nasty gash oozing blood from his chin and down over his neck, and another on his shoulder. His eye flutters open, and after a few seconds it focuses on Dorian.

“It dead?”

He wants to laugh and cry at the same time. “Yes, and you too, nearly.”

“Nah.” Bull shifts, but doesn’t try to get up as Cadash and Cassandra crowd around. “I’m okay.”

He lifts an arm, unbroken, apparently, and cups Dorian’s face in one massive hand. Dorian puts his other over it, and turns his face to kiss his bloody, dirty palm.

“Duck next time a giant takes a swing at you, perhaps,” Dorian murmurs, and Bull keeps his hand on his face a moment longer, Dorian kisses his palm again, and then they part so Cassandra can help him sit up.


	23. sphallolalia (dorian + cadash)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sphallolalia - Flirtatious talk that leads nowhere
> 
> [reblog](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/120812714250/sphallolalia)

“My dearest Cadash, people will think me a kept man if you don’t stop bringing me gifts.”

“How could I resist?” Cadash watched as he stripped off his gloves, which was a rather complex affair, and eased on one of the new bracers. “They bring out the colour in your eyes.”

He seemed to inflate with the praise, and she was glad to see it. He’d been buried under his research, eager to find Corypheus’ real name, and she was pretty sure he only remembered to eat because Iron Bull regularly checked on him. Then again, Josephine seemed to do the same thing for her, more often than she’d like to admit.

“How’s the fit?”

“It’s good.” He had bother bracers on, and was flexing his arms, testing them out. “The inner material could stand to have an extra fold along the seam. Shall I send a note to Harritt?”

“I’ll let him know, I’m heading down there. You’re welcome to come for a stroll, I certainly wouldn’t complain about the handsome man on my arm.”

Dorian gave the piles of books in his alcove a once over as he removed the bracers, then he seemed to make up his mind, and smiled at the Inquisitor. “How could I possibly refuse a woman as lovely as yourself?”


	24. boo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122022610890/48-for-the-ficlet)

It wasn’t the first time Iron Bull had had Dorian pushed up against the battlements on the way to his room, caught up in the quiet thrill of the open air, however shielded from view they were. The sun was nearly set, bathing everything in warm pink light as Bull sucked at his neck and finally managed to get into his leggings.

“Boo,” Cole said quietly from where he’d materialised, three feet from them.

Nearly a full minute passed where nothing was said; Bull and Dorian stared at him in quiet disbelief, and Cole watched them passively, rocking onto the balls of his feet.

“Boo?” Dorian echoed finally, huffing a laugh. “You’re saying ‘boo’ now?”

“Who told you to start saying ‘boo’?” Bull asked perceptively, grinning as he nudged affectionately at Dorian’s jaw, hand down his leggings mercifully still.

“Sera is making people laugh by making them surprised. I wanted to help.”

“And she told you to do this?” Dorian asked, incredulous. Cole nodded, big hat flopping about on top of his head.

“Yes. She didn’t want me to help but she was tired of holding the hurt. She told me something that’s like her something, even if it’s not together.”

Bull chuckled. “It’s a start. She’s getting a soft spot.”

“That’s adorable and very useful for blackmail,” Dorian said, “but we are a little, ah, busy, Cole.”

“Safe and strong, if people see they’ll know we’re a pair and I’ll only have to pretend to mind, like when he touches me in the tavern. Old wounds, not easy to let go of. Almost.”

“Yes, well.” Dorian sighed. “That. If you’d go find someone else to ‘boo’ at, that would be great.”

“Go on, kid,” Bull nodded his chin at him. “Maybe you should do it to Varric, I’m  sure he’d appreciate it more than we can at the moment.”

“Okay.” Cole smiled at them, and then he was gone, and they were laughing as they began to kiss again.


	25. maybe I could give you a massage?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122024152445/4)

Sex was one thing Dorian was very good at. He’d had a lot of it, and he was used to how it went, knew how to make it spectacularly.

Intimacy was something new. It was new and slightly frightening if he thought about it too long to be desired for more than sex, to almost timidly suggest a kiss with no intention for more, and for there to be not a single drop of hesitation or disappointment in Bull.

It was still strange to work he way around asking.

“I want to touch you,” he said, as Bull was unscrewing his leg brace.

He looked up, grinning. “Touch away.”

“Not like you’re thinking.”

“What am I thinking?”

 “Do you… well… I mean… maybe I could give you a massage?”

The grin morphed into a smile, full of warmth that Dorian could feel mirrored in his chest. 

“Sure. How do you want me?”

“Actually, I thought perhaps I could massage your knee for you.”

Bull looked surprised only for a second, but he was still smiling, and his voice was kind. “Not much you can do about the knee.”

“Maybe not. But, if you were okay with it, I could try some magic. A heat spell, perhaps.”

“You can try.”

There had been no hesitation, and Dorian knew then that he had been granted something precious.


	26. you heard me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122027769710/for-the-meme-adoribull-35)

Halward narrowed his eyes at his son. “Take off that ugly junk, Dorian.”

“What?”

Dorian frowned; there was nothing about him that could objectively be called ugly, or junk. Then his fingers touched the half dragon tooth, tipped with engraved metal, hanging around his neck.

“You heard me,” he said, voice clipped and vein throbbing at his temple. “Take. It. Off.”

White heat surged through him, and it took a measure of self control he’d long since had to employ not to set the room, or his father, on fire.

“And hear me,” he said. “Go fuck yourself.”


	27. tell me a secret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122032264895/45-dorian-bull)

Dorian dragged himself out of his dozing and spread himself out over Bull’s torso, stretching languidly. Bull was so comfortable, like a giant pillow and fireplace all in one, with added kisses and hair-stroking.

Bull grinned lazily at him. “Tell me a secret.”

Dorian raised his eyebrows, tipping his head against Bull’s chest. “A dirty secret?”

“Any secret. Something you’ve never told anybody else.”

“Hmm.” Dorian stretched again, hearing something in his back pop, and settled again. There were plenty of things he’d never told anybody, and only some of them seemed remotely interesting. There were tales of drunken debauchery he’d yet to share, moments he still couldn’t bear to show to the light, and then there was-

“I love you.”

 _Kaffas_ , Dorian thought, closing his eyes so he didn’t have to see Bull’s reaction to his traitorous tongue.

“That,” Bull said, and Dorian dared to peek open an eye, “is the worst kept secret in the entire world.”

“What?” Dorian pressed himself up onto his forearms, and glared at Bull, who had the audacity to grin.

“That doesn’t count, Dorian. It’s not a secret.” Then, softly: “I know.”

“You do?”

“I know, kadan.” Bull leaned up to kiss Dorian, who tried very hard to make himself breathe. “I love you, too. Also not a secret, I hope.”

“Not a secret,” Dorian murmured honestly, felt it down to his bones to be true, then surged forward to deepen the kiss.


	28. is there a reason you’re naked in my bed?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cadash POV
> 
> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122034186015/6-adoribull)

There was sand in her boots. Sand in her boots and in her clothes and probably lodged so deep inside of her she’d birth a beach with her next blood. All she wanted was a nice long soak in one of the bathhouse’s tubs with some of the expensive Orlesian soap and oil and other potions she’d been given since arriving at Skyhold, hence the detour to her chambers first. She had not expected this.

“Is there a reason you’re naked in my bed?”

At least both of them had the grace to look embarrassed, though Iron Bull did nothing to cover his giant flaccid member, and Dorian seemed to judge that scrambling for the sheet that they’d evidently kicked off the bed would reveal a lot more to Cadash than his round backside.

“Boss,” Bull said, grin positively sheepish. “We didn’t expect you back for another day.”

“We made good time.”

“It’s good to see you.”

“Looks like I’m seeing a lot more of you right now.”

Dorian groaned into the pillows, voice a hiss. “I told you this was a terrible idea.”

“What was the idea, precisely? I’m intrigued.” It was rather hard not to keep looking at the flesh on offer, but there was no real fascination for her beyond a mild curiosity.

When it appeared Dorian was shamed into silence, Bull spoke up again. “Just a bit of fun. We already did it on the war table, it felt like we needed to complete the set.”

Perhaps she should be angry, but she wasn’t. The chambers may have been private, but they were no more a sanctuary than anywhere else. She’d lived a long time without a private space, and having one now was new and didn’t align with how she worked. It was good to be able to hide away from her more boring responsibilities sometimes, but her rooms were already a revolving door when it came to her inner circle.

She began to shrug off her armour, finally looking away from the flesh tableau on her bed.

“If you’re looking for a more exciting challenge, have you considered doing it on Cullen’s desk?”

“What?” Dorian yelped, twisting his torso to gape at her as Bull laughed.


	29. you fainted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122041030095/for-the-number-fic-prompt-38)

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen it happen before, that a mage would exert themselves so much they passed out. Solas never seemed to, but Vivienne had done it once, Dalish the not-mage too. And then there was Dorian, who took down one of the two giants bearing down on them on his own, charring and burning away its tough hide until he reached soft flesh and could really put the fear into it. 

As soon as the other giant fell to its knees Bull left the Inquisitor and Cole to hack at the neck with their daggers, and he sprinted over to where the remaining giant was lumbering towards Dorian. With a horrifying screech and crack of breaking bones, fire ate through one of its knees and it tumbled to the ground. Bull put his axe in its neck and Dorian sent lightning to the same place, leaving the creature still and smoking.

He looked at Bull, grinning as blood tricked from both nostrils, and passed out.

Cadash and Cole came over as he lowered Dorian to the ground, ignoring his knee’s protests. He looked pale and clammy, and Bull wiped at the blood threatening to drip over his mouth. After a long moment Dorian stirred, blinking groggily.

“What happened?” he groaned.

“You fainted,” Bull said, trying not to let the worry that had tightened in his chest show in his voice. “Straight into my arms. You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

Dorian exhaled through his nose in some approximation of a laugh. “I’ll keep that in mind.”


	30. the paint’s supposed to go where?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122041970585/19-the-paints-supposed-to-go-where-adoribull)

“The paint’s supposed to go where?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never done this,” Dorian said, but Bull was grinning at him, and he let him take his hand to inspect his nails. They could be claws, if he let them grow, but Bull had such a habit of having his fingers in people it was little surprise he kept them short and neat.

He wiped the brush over the nail of Bull’s forefinger, leaving a stripe of bright red. Bull made a little sound of awe, and Dorian tried not to grin.

“I’d have mixed up a pink if I had the right powders, since it’s much more your colour.”

“I am pretty.” Bull preened exaggeratedly, but he kept his hand still so Dorian could continue with painting his nails. “Next time, eh?”

Dorian couldn’t stop the grin then, carefully lifting his hand to press a kiss to his knuckles before he got back to the task at hand.


	31. come over here and make me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> M rated for smut and rough sex
> 
> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122044187625/1-for-adoribull)

“You going to keep being so rude, Dorian?” Bull asked, voice like honey. “Or are you going to be good and quiet?”

“Come over here and make me.”

Bull growled, crossing the space to the bed and grabbing Dorian’s hair in one large hand and tugging the bound man up, back arching. Dorian whimpered, and there was a second when their eyes met, where there was understanding and Dorian’s tongue poked out to wet his bottom lip. The pause was a question, and Dorian did not use the watchword in response.

“I can think of a great way to shut you up, little mage,” Bull crooned, his hand going to the laces at the front of his tented trousers. “How about I stuff your pretty throat with my cock?”

Dorian whined, and struggled against Bull’s hold on his hair. This was going to be fun.


	32. looks like we’ll be trapped for a while

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122890535785/adoribull-17-am-i-being-boring-mebbe)

“Looks like we’ll be trapped for a while.”

Trapped was the wrong word, in Dorian’s eyes. Stranded was much more suitable; they were stranded in a sea cave on the Storm Coast, trying to last out a vicious storm. Thunder rolled over head, and despite his warm leathers and being sheltered from the wind Dorian could feel the cold creeping into his skin.

“Sure does,” Bull said, from where he was getting comfortable on an outcropping of the Coast’s signature hexagonal rocks. “How about you come over here and keep me warm?”

“Keep you warm? You’re a walking furnace.”

“And you’re a living flame.”

He wasn’t sure what made him smile, the poetry of it or the soft way Bull said it in the echoing cavern, but he fought the very real urge to giggle and instead crossed to sit with him. Bull pulled him into his lap before he could take up a place on the rocks.

“Must you manhandle me?”

“You like it.”

“Not in a wet cave I don’t.”

“You sure? We’ve got time to kill. I know how to keep us warm.”

“I bet you do.” Dorian sniffed. “Well, I’m open to suggestions…”

Bull’s fingers pressed into his hip, and Dorian was already thinking about which buckles to undo to let Bull slip his hand inside his leggings.


	33. hey, have you seen the..? oh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122894327140/46-adoribull-or-any-other-dragon-age-ship)

It’s not as oppressively hot in the shade of the Oasis where the second camp  is, compared to the baking sun on the flat rocks they’d reached first. It’s quite cool, really, when standing in the shade or wading into the water. The area is clear, the ventori cleared out and the Inquisitor has called it a day as the sun begins to fall.

Though he needs to talk to her about some of the documents they were carrying before he forgets to mention it, but she’s disappeared. She has that tendency, of knowing how to fade from site and reappear in a flash, not quite Cole but damn close for a mere mortal woman.

Most people have returned to camp now, a full party, save for Solas who is Maker knows where amongst the winding caves and Iron Bull, who is closer to the water. He heads over towards him, thinking the Inquisitor might be nearby.

He’s ten feet from him and his mouth is already working on words when Bull’s trousers drop to his ankles and he shucks himself out of them, revealing strong, scarred legs, meaty thighs and a full backside.

“Hey, have you seen the..? Oh.”

Bull turns, and Dorian gets an eyeful of his flaccid cock, which is still frankly quite ridiculously large. He’s staring, and he tries very hard to force himself to blink, to look away, to talk as if Bull isn’t standing stark naked in from of him in a veritable paradise.

“Like what you see, vint?”

Dorian swallows. “Inquisitor. Cadash. Have you seen her?”

“She went to hunt one of those fat waddling things for dinner.”

“Right.” He’s still looking at that damn cock. “Okay.” It’s glorious.  _Kaffas_ , he thinks, and then _I have a type_.

Bull seems to get bored of his useless staring, turning with a chuckle and wading out towards the waterfall tumbling over the rocks under where the entrance the the temple sits.

“Join me, if you want,” Bull says, tipping his head back under the torrent, unashamed in his nudity. “The water’s good.”

Dorian opens his mouth to say something, closes it again, and turns on his heel to march back to camp, willing the stirring of his erection away.


	34. things you said when you thought i was asleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> reblog on tumblr [here](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/122897786105/12-adoribull-pls)

Bull fucked him as if he could make him forget the whole terrible business with his father, and for all the time he was stretched open and wanting, it worked. It was hard to think about anything when Bull took him to bed, and it was a wonderful thing. 

So wonderful, that afterwards Dorian let himself doze in the afterglow, curled around Bull’s side, tucked into his arm. Usually he dragged himself up and out, once or twice he’d left in the middle of the night when Bull was asleep, and it was just the way things had to be.

He’d almost fallen under sleep’s spell, when he was roused by Bull curling a large arm around him to brush along his back. He kept his eyes closed and let himself hover in the strange space between sleeping and waking.

“I hope you’re here in the morning,” Bull murmured into the dark, shuffling and then settling his body as words Dorian didn’t think he’d been meant to hear settled in his chest.

 _If I wake up in the night_ , he thought to himself,  _I’ll leave. If I don’t…_


	35. things you said when i was crying

Dorian Pavus does not cry prettily. Perhaps if he did, he’d be more inclined to let himself weep, for the perfect dramatic flair a situation might call for. As it stands, his makeup smears, his eyes go red, and his nose runs - especially problematic with a moustache. Then there’s the way his lip curls up when he’s  really going for it, crying proper, revealing mercifully great teeth but twisting his face into a severe grimace.

It’s the reason he doesn’t want the man he’s been fucking to see him crying. Terribly off-putting, to see someone who has put a damn good effort into riding one’s cock, blubbering and snotty. 

Which is, in turn, is precisely the reason, combined with a Maker with a terrible sense of humour, that he starts crying in the Iron Bull’s room. He’s drunk, which he’s been with more frequency since returning from Redcliffe, not usually this sloppy of a drunk but it has been a long time since he’s actively drunk to forget. 

It’s all going well, being led to Bull’s room, the man’s eyes lingering on him, kisses sweet like the wine he’s been imbibing, and then it’s not.

“Fuck me. Fuck Tevinter, but fuck me.”

Bull leans back, leaving Dorian held up between his thigh and the door at his back. 

“I’m not going to fuck you, you’re very drunk.”

“You’ve fucked me drunk before.”

“Not this drunk.”

“Katoh. I remember, see? Let’s proceed.”

“I’m saying no, Dorian.”

Dorian bursts into tears.

Bull winces, but doesn’t startle, as if he’s expecting something as ludicrous. He moves Dorian over to the bed and sits him on the edge, where he sniffles and presses the heels of his palms against his eyes, already leaking tears. It’s ridiculous, to cry now, over what is undoubtedly a sensible call, but it hurts to be rejected.

Bull runs a hand down his back but Dorian shrugs away, wiping at his nose as he frees his eyes to glare at him.

“Why did you bring me here if you weren’t going to use me?”

He almost misses the way Bull’s lips press thin, but it’s gone in an instant as he cants his eyebrows up.

“You’re probably going to need someone to clean sick out of your moustache.”

“I’m fine,” he chokes out. “I’m fine.” He’s still sobbing. Brilliant.

“I’ve seen you look finer.”

Hideous, he knows it. The sobs come afresh when Bull hands him a huge handkerchief, and he blows his nose noisily.

“I should leave, if you won’t have me.”

“How about you stay here?”

Dorian whines, because even The Iron Bull won’t want him after this wretched display. He expected their last night to at least contain a round of goodbye sex. He blows his nose loudly again, as the bed dips and Bull sits beside him.

“Maybe I’ll fuck you in the morning, when you’re sober.”

He must be drunk, because the offer seems almost  _sweet_. Drunk is usually good enough, and certainly none of his past lays had ever offered to clean vomit from his face. He’d left his homeland out of wanting to expect  _more_ , and here he was years later surprised by the concept.

“I will hold you to it,” Dorian says, sniffling as he leans his head against Bull’s shoulder.


	36. kiss on the back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompted by [electricshoebox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/electricshoebox/profile)

The Iron Bull kisses where Dorian’s spine would show if he were a thinner man, or if he was bent and curved. As it stands, he’s half-asleep on his front as Bull uses his lips to trace over his muscles, long since mapped to his memory. The strong shoulders, the angular bone nearby, the dip and gentle slope to the small of his back. 

It’s a land he knows well, a place he’s never conquered, not really, not in more than the heated words in the midst of sex that they both enjoy. 

He teases the sheets away from the curve of his backside, presses his mouth just above the dip before the cleft, and nearly laughs to find himself thinking of the smell of Dorian’s sex-soaked skin as  _home_.


	37. of gentleness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: i love the part in your fake banter where vivienne is genuinely concerned about dorian being gentle with bull (cus he deserves it so much). so, sunday prompt: vivienne guestioning dorian with bull present, and dorian being offended at first but then seeing that viv really cares and that shes 100% right about bull deserving gentleness, ensuing in some fluff
> 
> I never got to the fluff part, just Vivienne POV.

As good a friend as Dorian has proved, as delightful a dresser and as adaptable to the Game as his upbringing had made him, he gives her pause. She could not truly know how much of Tevinter he still carries with him, and beyond being comfortable in the knowledge that he would never betray the Inquisition, she hasn’t thought much of it. It is his to work out, as suits him.

Until it isn’t.

To find out The Iron Bull and Dorian are having sex is of little meaning to her. To discover it is a liaison is something else entirely. Their business is their own, but it doesn’t mean that her concerns can be put aside so easily, when she’s found herself so fond of them.

“Dorian, dear,” she says, over dinner in the great hall in the privacy that the throng of many threads of conversation all around can give.

“Yes?”

“You are being gentle with the Bull, aren’t you?”

Bull looks between them as he eats potatoes, but his conversation manners are much better than the ones that govern keeping his weapon clean, so he does not say anything without being addressed.

Dorian, however, seems to almost forget himself, opening his mouth and then closing it, swallowing his mouthful of food.

Dorian visible bristles. “ _What_?”

Vivienne knows Dorian would be an easy man to like, if not for him being unapologetically Tevinter. He uses Old Tevene phrases in polite conversation, he has done no work to lose his accent, and the man can wax poetic about Tevene culture at the merest provocation.

She admires him for being unwilling to give up an identity that is clearly comfortable for him, despite the issues it has caused. But the man had proved himself to be unlike the Tevinters she’d had the misfortune of encounter at court, and proved himself both a steadfast ally and a good friends. It would seem to her, and she is usually right in her estimation, that Dorian’s attempt to remain Tevinter at his core means navigating some very unfamiliar territories.

“It’s a perfectly simple question,” she says, lifting her wine and considering it briefly. “Are you gentle with him?”

She thinks of how strange it was at first to be thrust into the culture of Orlais. The transfer to the Montsimmard Circle had been turning point for the direction of Vivienne’s life, but it had not meant the sudden immersion in everything Orlais stood for had been easy.

She had fought much opposition, played the Game twice as well as her peers, and pulled herself up from obscurity to be thought of primarily of First Enchanter of Montsimmard and to the Orlesian Court, and not as the Rivaini-blooded, Free Marches-born foreign upstart mage.

She had wanted it, not out of any particular fondness for Orlais or Orlesian culture. But Orlesian sensibility, hierachy, politics; she had known early that that was something she could use, some way to be more than the possibility Ostwick offered her.

Still, being Orlesian meant not being.. adaptable, as some. That would certainly have not worked in her time in the Inquisition, so she adapts, changes again to find her place on her new venture. She can hardly judge Dorian for choosing to hold onto the part of Tevinter that worked for him, even if it looks to her eyes to have done him nothing but cruelty. By the way many talk about Orlais, she imagines many think the same could be said for her.

“I’m sure he’s broadcast enough of our… for you to have some idea what we..”

She almost feels bad at taking advantage of how easy Dorian is to flap with this topic.

“Oh, I know very well you’re having fantastic sex. I’ll remind you my balcony overlooks the battlements, and I can see right onto that spot you favour when you can’t bear to wait until you’re inside his room.”

Bull grins, but continues to not say anything, and Dorian casts around to see if anyone is listening. If they are, they do not matter.

The Iron Bull is, perhaps one of the best men Vivienne had ever met. He reminds her of Bastien, in his way. She knows he would play the Game excellently, if not for the hindrance of being qunari, and he plays his own version in the Inquisition every day. The Iron Bull as a tough mercenary leader is not as act in the same way that her position is no act, and things affected are were just as important as those that come with no effort.

In a world in which both of them had been born Orlesian nobility, or perhaps just one where neither mage nor qunari caused such upset to Orlesian sensibility, she would have endeavoured to marry him as soon as meet him, she thinks. He keen, shrewd mind would have complimented her own talents, and she is sure they would have been unstoppable as a joined force.

“Then what are you getting at?”

“I know enough about Tevinter to know the ways in which you’d be able to handle an affair of this nature in your homeland, and I can admit to being a little concerned that that’s something you’ve carried with you into this arrangement.”

Dorian, who is very flushed, looks ready to call a storm down around them, and that is something that concerns her too. Bastien was a fantastic lover, and she has her own experiences of how magic can react to pleasure, but the stories of curtain fires still give her pause. Dorian has a temper, and she knows how much Bull likes to tempt it.

“You’re implying that because I’m Tevene, I’m incapable of treating my bedpartners with respect?”

“Come now, the Bull is much more than a bedpartner.”

Dorian splutters, and the Iron Bull’s gaze shifts entirely to him.

“You still think of me as a Tevinter cockroach, Madam?”

She smiles. “Of course not, my darling. You have proved yourself much more than a simple Tevinter runaway. I am concerned, that given the nature of the relationship between your two peoples, that you might not have considered how to approach this affair.”

“Ma’am.” The iron Bull speaks, finally, and it seems as much a plea as a warning, the look that accompanies it almost plaintive.

“My dear, I’m not even sure you understand that you deserve gentleness, let alone ask your partner to be so.”

"This is none of your business, Vivienne.” Dorian looks embarrassed and on the indignant edge of sulking, but she expected as much.

“I count you both amongst my friends, I am merely concerned.”

“You needn’t be, thank you very-” He jumps, and stops, and Vivienne notes that Bull’s hand is under the table. So, a calming hand upon him, she’d wager, something that seems to take the wind from his bluster.

“Of course,” she says mildly, rising from her seat, leaving the rest of her terrible dinner wine in the glass. “I will leave you to your evening.”

And she does. She has done as intended, to plant the thought in a more than capable mind, and to see if it blooms into anything of note. She can do no more than that.

 


	38. jealous kiss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Jealous kiss](http://justjasper.tumblr.com/post/126623301630/number-21-for-adoribull)

Dorian had not known he was a jealous man.

The fact is that he had never had cause to be before: he had no claim on the men he went to bed with, nor them to him, and that had suited him as much as Tevinter had allowed it to. There was no chance for more.

Except, then The Iron Bull is  _more_. He is kind and dependable and by some turn that leaves not only Dorian surprised, he thinks, only fucking him. 

So it’s on a night like any other in the Herald’s Rest that Dorian discovers he is a jealous man. Not only that, but apparently he is a  _ridiculously_ jealous man, because the person he’s currently trying hard not to glare at is  _Cullen Rutherford_.

Iron Bull flirts with everyone, exceptions only being Vivienne, who he has much too much of a tama complex over, and Sera, who he figures Bull clocked within minutes of meeting her as completely uninterested in men, and practically a baby. 

Dorian knows this, and it hasn’t bothered him for a moment, not when he knows Iron Bull stopped tumbling the kitchen staff and the barmaids and the soldiers when he started tumbling him. 

But there’s something in the rare sight of a slightly drunk Cullen, pink faced and more at ease than he’s been seen since that Wicked Grace game, holding his own as Bull leans into his personal space that makes Dorian’s gut twist.

He’s being stupid, he knows he is. While he and Cullen have played a few chess games and avoided serious talk, Iron Bull and Cullen have a lot more in common; they are soldiers who train together,whose men mingle, and he’s sure it’s under Bull’s insistence that Cullen is in the tavern at all.

Cullen is awkward, to say the least. Something about spending his life in an order that demanded chastity, he considers, but the drink seems to be helping because -  _fasta vass_  - he’s combing his hand back through his hair and  _smirking_ at Bull. He looks happy, and relaxed, and infuriatingly, he’s clearly flirting back at the Bull as good as he’s being given. 

_Git_ , Dorian thinks, when he knows he should be thinking,  _good on you, didn’t know you had it in you_.

Dorian can’t hear them over the din of the pub, and he wishes he wanted to know what suggestive things Bull is saying out of mere curiosity, instead of the simmering jealousy in him.  _Cullen_ , really? Did he no longer hold Bull’s attention? Was he not a challenge enough any more, now that he was guaranteed to end up in Bull’s room at the end of the night?

He downs his drink, and decides enough is enough. If he can’t be an adult about it, if he can’t see Bull interacting with another human being without the urge to snarl and sulk and claim, he’s going to remove himself from the situation. He tosses coins on the bar and heads for the door. He hasn’t slept in his own bed in the three weeks since they returned from the Western Approach, and it’s quite possible it’s about time.

“Dorian!”

He’s not even made it across the keep when he hears the jangle of Bull’s brace against the floor, the night quiet around them. Dorian slows, but doesn’t stop, and Bull catches up to him soon enough.

“You okay, Dorian?”

“I’m fine.” He regrets his tone the second it leaves him. It’s too curt, too obvious; if Bull didn’t know something was the matter before, he surely does now.

“What’s wrong?” Bull falls into step beside him, and Dorian doesn’t look at him.

“Nothing.” It’s a lie, they both know, but Bull never needles more than Dorian is willing to give.

“Okay.” He shrugs. “At least let me walk you to your door.”

“Fine.”

They walk in silence, and Dorian’s jealousy boils. Maybe if he says nothing, Bull will try harder again, will see him as more interesting to spent his night working on than Cullen _bloody_ Rutherford. 

When they reach his room, Dorian lets himself inside and Bull leans on the doorframe, horns resting on the outside of the top beam.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You’ve not upset me.”

“No? You think the daggers you were glaring at Cullen were subtle?”

He sighs. Of course they weren’t. 

“I’m sorry. I’m- I was surprised to see you and him-” He waves his hand uselessly. He feels more pathetic and ridiculous than he had in the tavern.

“Cullen doesn’t relax much. But apparently you get some strong ale in him, he loosens up a bit, and thinks he’s suave.”

“Sounds like fun.” He hates that it pains him to say it.

“Yeah. I wouldn’t have done it if I knew it was gonna hurt your feelings.”

He scoffs. “My feelings aren’t hurt!”

“I care about your feelings,” Bull carries on, gentle and steady and not looking away from Dorian, “and I care about you. If flirty talk with other people upsets you, I can stop.”

“You- what? You’d  _stop_?”

“Yeah.”

Dorian hasn’t even considered it, just accepted it as a fact of life and not had an issue with it until now.

“But I’m being ridiculous,” he says eventually, exasperated beyond measure that the hulking qunari that should have been a quick lay turned out to be the best man he’s ever met, curse him.

“Nah. I’m guessing most people don’t like the person they’re bedding making eyes at other people.”

“Oh, so you were making eyes at Cullen?” It’s a cruel thing to say, to imply something he knows isn’t true, but perhaps with cruelty this embarrassment will be over quicker.

“No.” Bull looks serious. “I was just getting the feel of what Cullen’s like with a good few beers in him. I don’t want to fuck him. Or anyone else that’s not a prickly mage vint.”

And there’s something Dorian hasn’t thought of before; Bull isn’t fucking anyone but him, but it never occurred to him that it was because Bull only  _wants_ to fuck him. And for Bull to admit it like it’s just a fact, like nothing could be simpler, almost makes Dorian need to sit down. Instead he takes a step closer to Bull in the doorway.

“I don’t want you to stop. I mean, I don’t need you to stop being like you are with people. I don’t mind, tonight I just-” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“You sure?”

He nods. “I think I am.”

“You’ll tell me if you’re not sure sometime?”

“You’re giving me permission to swoop in and remind you where your affections are laid?”

Affections,  _Maker_ , that was much too enthusiastic a choice of phrase. But Bull just smiles, scarred mouth showing a hint of slightly pointed canine.

“If you like. You could always come sit in my lap, that’d get the message across.”

He narrows his eyes, and the jealousy has ebbed away while he wasn’t paying attention to it. “Oh, you’d like that.”

“Yeah, I would.”

Dorian huffs, and pulls Bull into his room by his harness, shutting the door behind him. He leans up to kiss him, and Bull meets him halfway with an eager, docile mouth that Dorian claims greedily. 


	39. things you said when you were drunk

He gets drunk in the tavern the first night back from Redcliffe. Varric and Iron Bull sit with him and listen to him swing violently between “fuck Tevinter, and fuck my father!” and “I could have been a better son if I’d tried, perhaps things would have worked out…” He’s in no fit state to determine if he means either of them.

_“It’s one thing for you to shame yourself, Dorian,” his father had said, something that might have tried to pass for pity in his voice, “continuing your habit for debasing yourself, but to go to such lengths to shame your very name..”  
_

_“What lengths?”  
_

_“It can come as no surprise that every noble family in Tevinter is talking of the heir to House Pavus selling his body to a qunari at the Inquisition’s behest.”_

_He laughs. “After everything you taught me, I would have thought you’d learn to treat rumours with some degree of scepticism.”  
_

_“So it’s not true?”  
_

He stays drunk mainly to put off the hangover he knows he’s going to cause himself. He ends up in Bull’s room on the third night, and he hates that Bull is  _nice_ to him. He surely heard their fighting from outside the tavern, and must have known Dorian protested his honour only, offering nothing in Bull’s defence, denied the accusation of prostituting himself and with it, denied his association. 

“Dorian,” Bull says, wrapping his hand around the bottle he’s trying to lift to his mouth. “You need to slow down.”

Dorian snatches the wine to his chest and glares, because Bull doesn’t understand this, how could he, with no families under the Qun?

“Do you have any  _idea_  what it’s like to be the biggest regret of someone’s life?”

Bull stands, doesn’t stop Dorian as he swigs from the bottle.

“I hope not.”

It means nothing when he’s drunk, but in the days to come when he returns to sobriety, the words hit like a giant’s fist.


	40. “i almost lost you” kiss

Iron Bull can taste blood, sharp and metallic, and he wishes - oh, he  _wishes_  - it was his own. He was built to take the blows, to stand under a hit a that would cripple someone else, and Dorian  _knows_  this, should have known this.

But there’s blood all over him, most of it isn’t his, and Vivienne is on the grass with him, straddling Dorian, palms pressed to the shoulder where he took an axe. She’s muttering, and Iron Bull is just standing there with Cadash, watching, because they can do nothing else.

A blow that might have cost Bull am arm, he thinks, is going to cost Dorian his life. His clavicle might have saved his own arm, but that’s only given him minutes. Minutes with Vivienne’s hands on his wound, weaving useless magic through him instead of - instead -

“ _Fasta vass!_ ”

He hears himself whine, high and desperate like a damn mabari, and then Vivienne is helping Dorian to sit up so she press a healing potion to his lips.

“Thankfully, the dragonbone took most of the impact, it seems,” Vivienne is saying as she gets to her feet and helps Dorian shakily to his. “That should keep you until we make it back to camp.”

Dorian nods, shaking and pale.

“Bull, darling, he ought not walk back.”

It’s the prompt his needs for his legs to cooperate, and he strides forward to sweep Dorian into his arms. Dorian doesn’t protest even slightly, and that makes Bull ache.

Bull leans down and kisses his forehead, lingering and desperate as Vivienne and Cadash fall into step a little ahead of them, talking quietly.

“Looks like you’re going to be alright, big guy.” He can hardly believe he gets to say the words, he was so sure…

“Y'okay, m’okay,” Dorian manages. “Wear armour. You…” He groans, shifts in Bull’s hold until he’s leaning into him. “Stupid.”

Bull can’t bring himself to argue it.


	41. druxy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something which looks good on the outside, but is actually rotten inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for abuse references.

“He touches you because he can’t stop thinking about you.”

Dorian sighs exaggeratedly at Cole, as they sit near the fire as Dorian takes watch, but his stomach still flutters at the words.

“Secret, soft, safe, he wants to keep you if you’d ask.”

“You really need to practice not getting in people’s heads, Cole,” Dorian says, without heat, and without really wanting him to stop. It’s just them in the night, the Inquisition scouts talking their turn walking the perimetre, everyone else sleeping.

“But he watches and you walk, bright and easy with the others, and he doesn’t like it.”

Dorian frowns. “What?”

“He teaches you to hide the bruises the same day he gives them to you. He hurts you because you have to know you’re his, a thing he worked hard for, shiny and perfect and nobody else’s.”

“No,” he says firmly, staring at Cole. “You’re wrong, It wasn’t like you’re making it sound. What Bull does isn’t.. it’s not..”

Cole tips his head up, confusion on his pale face. “Not The Iron Bull. The blood never comes out of the white robe. The slaves tell your father what they find because he told them to, red on white three times, but he hopes it will make you learn.”

“Oh.” There’s relief and a sinking sensation all at once.

“Everyone liked him.”

“He was a nice man,” Dorian murmurs, turning towards the fire. “Nice when it made a difference, when it mattered. When he was seen.”

“He is not a nice man,” Cole says, insistent. “He would have said yes.”

Dorian breathes into his hands cupped around his chin. 

“That’s why I never asked.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case it isn't obvious, this is reference to Rilienus being an asshole, not Bull.


	42. hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> injury/gore warning

“Oh please,” Dorian gasps, as Bull squeezes his mangled hand between his own scarred ones, blood dripping down both their forearms. “Please, oh please,  _kaffas_!”

“You’ll be okay, kadan, Stitches is coming.”

The arrival of Stitches doesn’t help Dorian’s shaking nerves, particularly as Bull has to release his hand to show the damage to him. Two of his fingers are sliced to the bone, and his smallest is at an unnatural angle.

“This is going to hurt,” Stitches says, threading a thick needle as Dorian bleeds sluggishly. “But it might save the fingers.”

Dorian nods, offers his hand up to Stitches, and presses his face into Bull’s shoulder.

“I love you but I don’t want to  _match_!”

Bull doesn’t feel much like laughing, but does, for him, as he kisses the top of his head and takes his undamaged hand to bear the pain with him.


	43. grapholagnia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the urge to stare at obscene pictures

It’s something. It really is something.

“An Orlesian commissioned this, you say?” Dorian asks, looking at the painting appraisingly. Krem bobs his head, shoulder to shoulder with him.

“A Orlesian  _painted_  this..”

“Am I going to regret asking the circumstances?”

“We were on a job to deal with bandits on someone’s land. The noble who hired us took a shine to the Chief. The guy was nice enough, for a noble. Let the company stay on the estate and everything, kept the wine flowing.“

“And he painted this in that time?”

“We were there a good three weeks weeding them out. The man was a little taken with the Chief as his muse. Apparently this was one of several.”

Dorian tipped his head, and bit his tongue against the comment that formed. Thankfully, the real Iron Bull arrived with much the same sentiment.

“And you thought you had a thing for size,” he said as he sidled up on the other side of Dorian. Krem’s eyeroll could practically be heard.

“The proportions are… enthusiastic,” Dorian offered. “So the Chargers just carry this around with them, rolled up in someone’s pack? This deserves to be framed! Call the Inquisitor, I’m sure she’ll hang it in pride of place!”

“Hey, kadan, I thought you’d want it in  _our_  room.”

“Pointless, when I get as many sessions as I like with the model.”

“You do like to see me pose and flex.”

Krem groaned.“You have to enable him, Altus?”


	44. before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Adoribull Sunday Prompt!!!! The Iron Bull is the one to fall in love first, and he does it /long/ before Dorian. How long is up to you! Months? A year?? Maybe longer???"

There is no love under the Qun.

It’s both true, and not. He told the Herald that people under the Qun love their friends, but they don’t fuck them. But not “love”, the kind most people think of.

It’s why he knows he’s in love with Dorian the moment Haven goes to shit. 

He knows anger, and fear, and camaraderie, and care, but there is no love under the Qun, so it’s not precisely hard to deduce that this brand new feeling, this, ache in his chest when he can’t see Dorian through the snow, the relief that makes him want to sink to his knees when the storm passes and he spots him, bruised and burned from the Elder One’s archdemon but  _alive -_  this is love.

As a child, there was more than one fable told about someone who cared about someone else above all other, above their friends, peers and their community, above their Tamas and their Arishok. Love is selfish. Love is why some people run.

And there is no love under the Qun, and he hasn’t been home in so long, and maybe, he thinks, maybe, this is how it starts. Playing the part of Tal-Vashoth, becoming the part.

It is probably a terrible idea to keep fucking Dorian after he realises just what this is, but the tundra is cold, and the Herald might be fucking dead, and Dorian comes to him with his arm in bandages and slips into Bull’s bedroll, and he fucking  _loves_  this man.


	45. spoils of the qunari

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian and Bull seeing those ridiculous statues from the Spoils of the Qunari dlc for the first time

“I’m going to piss myself!”

The Bull is surprised Dorian can get the words out for laughing. Him, Sera  _and_  Varric. Cadash, at least, is managing to keep a straight face.

“Well, it’s certainly,” she gestures to the whole scene in general, and her mouth moves for more words that never come.

“Orlesians,” the Bull growls. 

“Oh, come on, Tiny,” Varric gasps, clapping him on the forearm, “they thought you’d like it.”

“You going to laugh when the Boss gets an ‘Orzammar’ collection, throne made of naked dwarves?”

“We’re surfacers, remember? Not really that big on racial pride.”

“It’s sort of offensive,” the Bull says. It’s an understatement, but he says it like it’s a joke, because the sheer ridiculousness of it can’t be ignored. 

“At least Sparkler likes it.”

Dorian is bracing himself on the bicep of one of the naked qunari statues, crying with laughter, barely able to hold himself up, and that’s what sets the Bull off; he starts to laugh. At least there’s that. Soon, even Cadash is laughing, and their laughter rings through the hall.

If only his room was big enough for the bed.


	46. temporary eye injury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "adoribull sunday prompt! the iron bull suffers a temporary injury to his remaining eye and the only he allows close despite the panic is dorian. cue the gentlest dorian and vulnerable!bull."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gore warning

Red Templars fight dirty. Underneath it all, the Bull recognises the stances, the moves, how they employ their training, but something about them going rogue has made them go erratic, too. It’s why he’s too slow to stop one of the ones with pointed crystallised arms from jabbing at his face right as he swings at them.

He’s not sure if the blow lands, as his face lights up with pain, vision red and then gone completely, and he stumbles, uses the head of his axe to try and steady himself.

When he’d lost his first eye, the first thing he’d thought beyond the pain was that he could still see. He would have felt bad if Krem, that unknown kid, had died, but he would’t have mourned. He hadn’t known anything about him, hadn’t known he could sew, or that he could swing a fucking great maul around. 

Now he can’t see, and the pain lights up his skull, and the people he’s fighting with, the people he’s protecting, he _knows_  them. Cadash smokes elfroot to relax, and if she likes someone, invites them to drink tea that will make them trip balls. Sera’s been cutting the last pages out of all of Cassandra’s books, but she’s been saving them, too. Varric sends most of the stipend the Inquisition gives him back to Kirkwall, and insists on doing long-winded reports for Cullen after every trip, just to annoy him. Dorian- Dorian, Dorian-

Blood pounds in his ears, and he hoists his axe up, because even if he can’t see, he can still swing until he’s taken down. That’s what they need, so that’s what he can be. A mindless weapon, after all.

Someone approaches, and his aim’s off, because there’s a yell but his axe makes no contact.

“Bull, it’s over!”

“Shit, Tiny!”

His next swing cracks against a barrier, that telltale sound of physical force hitting magical energy, and fuck, if the Red Lyrium’s letting them cast barriers now, they’re all in the shit.

“Back up, back up.”

“Shite, look at his face.”

His blood is singing, and he’s going to die feeling invincible, blinded and dangerous and there’s some kind of glory in that, somewhere, protecting them even when he can’t see a thing. He can try it, anyhow. He’s hefting his axe, turning his head to catch the sound of the grass underfoot, takes a breath and then-

“Amatus!”

He stops. He turns it over quickly in his mind, and exhales. Three pairs of feet in the grass nearby, one closer than the others, and- shit. It’s over. It’s been over for long minutes, but his body still wants to fight, and he can’t fucking  _see_ -

“Bull, the fight’s over.”

“You alright?” he calls, stomach clenching at the sound of Dorian’s voice.

“ _I’m_  fine, Bull,” Dorian says, annoyed. “We’re all fine. Are you going to swing at me if I come over there?”

“Of course not.”

He would never - but Dorian’s feet move across the grass even before the Bull has dropped his axe.

“Kaffas,” Dorian says, as he puts a hand on the Bull’s shoulder and presses down. The Bull goes without a fight, sinking to his knees.

“It’s gone, shit,” he says, surprised to find his tongue heavy in his mouth,a prickle where his eye should be. “What’re you going to do with a blind qunari?″

“Much the same as I already do with you, I imagine,” Dorian says, hands now at his face, hurting everywhere they touch. “The eye’s not gone, though.”

Couldn’t get a clean blow like last time. Figures. Dorian presses his hand where the Bull’s got the remains of an eye, and he can feel the magic creeping under the skin. Even if Dorian was a healer, he doubts he can do much but find out what the damage is.

“This is going to hurt.”

Dorian yanks at something, and immediately presses magic where the pain is, as the Bull yells through his teeth.

“I’m going to look stupid with two patches.”

“I think you’ll just continue to look stupid with one for now,” Dorian says, as he takes his hand away from the Bull’s face, and, blinking, the Bull sees Dorian dropping a shard of red lyrium to the ground with a look of mild nausea. He  _sees_ it.

“I thought it got my eye,” he says, lifting a hand to touch gingerly at the flesh around his eye socket. Dorian cuffs his hand away.

“You’re lucky it didn’t. An inch over, and it would have ruined your eye. As it was, That piece of foul lyrium merely pressed rather too insistently against the structure. You  _will_ go see the healers when he go to to camp, I can’t be sure I didn’t just delay the onset of damage.”

The Bull is too relieved to argue, lifting his hands to wrap them around Dorian’s waist. Dorian allows it, leaning into the Bull’s space, and lets his hands fall to his neck.

“Thank you, kadan, for coming to the rescue.”

“Always,” Dorian says, rolling his eyes even as his fingers press into the muscles of the Bull’s neck.


	47. favourite spot in skyhold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adoribull Prompt Sunday: What is Dorian and Bull's favourite spot in Skyhold and why?

“Home sweet home,” Dorian says, as they tumble through the door of the Bull’s room. 

Oh, isn’t that a thing to marvel at. That it’s a drafty room with a patched-up roof and a collection of garishly Orlesian pillows on the bed that he considers to be his home.

The Bull himself, grinning at him, hauls him bodily across the room and deposits him on the bed, scattering the pillows.

“Home is where the rope is,” the Bull says, already divesting Dorian of his robe with practised hands. “Red, maybe purple? You look so good in purple.”

Dorian snorts. “Don’t think that’s how the expression goes.”

“No? How about you remind me, kadan.”

“I rather think you’ve just answered for yourself,” Dorian says, as he reaches for the Bull’s neck, and pulls him down to kiss him in the quiet of  _their_  room.


	48. baby bump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian loving on Bull's baby bump.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Features pregnant Bull by whatever means you want to imagine.

The Bull meets Dorian at the gates of Skyhold, four weeks after nasty, unavoidable business featuring magic only Dorian could help with. Probably something creepy and dead. Cadash had apologised, and promised to bring him back as soon as possible. A month isn’t so bad.

“You’ve gotten so big!” Dorian says, practically beaming at him, and no matter how much he appears to fight the grinning, he can’t seem to stop.

He’s at six months, and since Dorian has been gone his body has changed shape dramatically. He’s not really that big, seeing as he started out big anyway, but now his belly is most definitely a  _bump_ , and not a  _gut_  or a  _paunch_. Before, they joked that maybe Stitches was having them on, telling them he could feel the unborn in his womb. Now there’s no denying the way his belly sits, the firmness of the swell.

The Bull, smiles at him, reaches up to hold his lover’s face, and watches as Dorian’s mouth twitches. Ten seconds, he reckons.

“Hello, kadan.”

“Hello yourself,” Dorian says. “How have you kept?”

“I’m good.” 

Dorian’s mouth twitches again, and then his face crumples, his shoulders slump. There it is. 

“You got so  _big_  while I was gone,” he murmurs, “I missed it.”

“C’mon,” the Bull takes Dorian’s shoulder, and nudges him around. “Let’s go welcome you back properly.”

It doesn’t end up being sex, because Dorian still looks miserable. Even more so when the Bull undresses, the full changed shape of him on display.

“It’s alright, kadan,” he soothes, as Dorian gives him a watery sort of smile. “You didn’t miss much.”

“I shouldn’t have been here with you. I wanted to be, so much.”

“I know. But other people need you, kadan.”

The Bull could lie, and make the whole thing less painful. But’s never lied to the Dorian, not outright. Omissions, sometimes, grey lies, he supposes.

“Here,” the Bull says, as he sits on the bed and coaxes Dorian over. “Something else happened while you were away.”

“What?” Dorian says, eyes suspiciously wet, but not actually crying. He puts his hands on the Bull’s stomach at his encouragement, and the Bull puts his much bigger ones over the top.

“Been feeling them moving.”

Them singular, Stitches assured him. Feels weird to say ‘it’. Weirder to say eva-imekari, beginning-child, even though that feels like it make the most sense.

“You have?” Dorian seems to brighten at this, fingers pressing into his bump.

“Yeah. More every week. Oof, there they go.”

Their eva-imekari is going to beat the shit out of his spleen by the time he’s done cooking them up.

“I can’t feel anything,” Dorian whispers, as if his voice might scare them still. “Perhaps it’s too soon for such movements to- to…  _Maker_ , I can feel it.”

The Bull grins at Dorian’s rapt attention, helps to move his hand to keep them over the little flutters of movement. They chase them for long moments, until they fade away. 

“Must’ve gone back to sleep,” the Bull says. Dorian looks so fondly at him, making no move to free his hands from under the Bull’s.

“Oh, amatus. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for you.”

“It’s okay, Dorian. You’re here now, aren’t you?”

“And I’m not going anywhere again any time soon.”

Dorian leans forward and kisses the Bull’s stomach between their hands, and begin to press kisses all along the curve of his belly.


	49. wax play

The Bull drips white wax over Dorian’s backside, cataloguing all the breathy noises with each hot stripe.

“You look like I’ve already spent all over you. A lot.”

Dorian laughs breathlessly, and the Bull fucks him hard and says filthy things as the wax cracks under his gripping hands.

*

Black wax pools on the Bull’s chest like demonic ichor, as Dorian’s body undulates against him.

“So nice of you to step into my garden,” Dorian says, because he is a desire demon and doing a fantastic job of seducing the Bull, if his cock twitching inside him is any indication. “I think I’ll have you stay a while.”

*

If he didn’t know, if it hadn’t been his hand dripping the red wax down onto beautiful brown skin, he’d think Dorian was cut up and dying. 

Neck, wrists, arms, chest, all covered in cuts - no - in wax. Dorian, writhing and moaning, almost gone with the pain-pleasure of it.

“More, please. Please Bull, fuck, it hurts,  _please_.”

He drips wax along the delicate crease of Dorian’s thigh as he takes his cock into his mouth and sucks.

*

They use purple wax the first time they mix wax and magic. The Bull’s back, his chest, his arms, dripping with wax that rolls down in long rivulets, kept from hardening as soon as they hit with heat from Dorian’s hand.

“Shit,” he murmurs as he feels a drip of wax slide dangerous close to his ass before it solidifies, turning his blindfolded face towards where he thinks Dorian is.

“Purple looks so good on you, amatus.”


	50. roofie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Modern AU – Bull stops someone from putting a roofie in Dorians drink.

Dorian certainly didnt expect his night to go like this, but here he sits, flabbergasted.

He’d been surveying the slim pickings the bar has by way of _offerings_ , about to down a second martini, when he’s been stopped by a very large, very grey hand over the top of his glass.

“Excuse me,” he snaps at the frankly massive qunari who’d lowered his face to catch his eye. His two to the qunari’s one, since he’s wearing an _eyepatch_.

“Sorry,” is all the qunari says, before he takes Dorian’s drink. Dorian doesn’t even have time to muster his indignance into action before the man is walking down the bar with it.

He stops beside an uninteresting looking brown-haired, stubbly white man, and offers the drink to him. Dorian can’t believe his eyes, that he’s just had his drink stolen to help with someone else’s attempt to _pull_.

It quickly becomes even weirder, as the qunari hunches, and Dorian can’t hear him, and the only thing threatening about him is perhaps only a side effect of his sheer size, but the other man takes the drink and downs it in one while looking like he’s had the fear of the Maker put into him. 

Apparently satisfied, the qunari heads back towards Dorian, pausing only to lean over the bar to speak with the bartender, who has also been watching the exchange.

“Sorry about that,” he says, leaning on the bar next to Dorian.

“What exactly was _that_?”

“Seems like the guy managed to roofie himself.”

“What?”

Dorian has worked it out before the qunari can begin an explanation, and Dorian hold up a hand to stop him doing so. He peers around him to see the man being escorted into a back room by a fierce-looking female bouncer.

“Right. Well. Thank you.”

“I’m the Iron Bull. Let me buy you a replacement drink?”

“You’re going to hit on me?” Dorian can’t help but laugh incredulously. “After that?”

“Hey, I was planning to hit on you all night.”

“And would you have left him to his plan if you weren’t?” Dorian asks, raising an eyebrow at him. There’s no heat to the question, but the very nature of it might have rankled some. The Iron Bull doesn’t look offended.

“Of course not. Just that I saw what happened because I haven’t been able to stop looking at you since you walked in.”

“Well,” Dorian says, preening a little, “another martini, then.”

“And how do you like it?” The Iron Bull asks, voice gone a little lower.

“Wet,” Dorian says, “dirty.”

The Iron Bull grins at him, and turns to flag down the bartender.


	51. native tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A spell renders one (or both) of them unable to speak anything but his native tongue.

The whole ordeal is weird, but the only time it shifts from weird to something worse is right at the beginning, right when the Bull has his face screwed up with concentration, trying to make his mouth form words in Common, or Tevene, or Orlesian, and being able to speak in nothing but Qunlat.

“Bas saarebas,” the Bull says, and the words alone might have wounded Dorian just a little, but it’s the way the Bull looks at him when he addresses him like that that gives him pause; like they’re reluctantly pulled from him, like he has no other recourse.

“You can’t say my name, can you?” Dorian asks, and the Bull gives a sharp shake of his head, tension easing with Dorian’s understanding.

“So it can’t be that you’ve forgotten your Common. Certainly you can understand it, but you’re being kept from using it.”

He is _bas saarebas_ , he supposes, and it’s only the spectre of sewn lips and masked faces that makes the address uncomfortable. It’s hardly the Bull’s fault, especially in his condition, but still the Bull doesn’t use it again.

*

“This is ridiculous!” Dorian grouses, slamming the book closed. “We’re no closer to figuring this out than we we a week ago. What possible purpose does this enchantment serve, that it wouldn’t fade with distance? You can’t very well speak an incantation away from that forsaken ruin, it seems utterly-”

The Bull says something in Qunlat, the ending the only part familiar to Dorian; “Kost, Ataashi.”

“Did you just call me a dragon?”

The Bull grins at him. Dorian sticks his chin out in a well practised show of haughtiness.

“Arguing about this with you isn’t going to go anywhere is it?”

“Ataas shokra esaam.”

“Is that so?” Dorian chuckles. “My grasp of Qunlat might not yet be good enough to make it as sporting as we’d like.”

It helps, though, and learning to spar in an unfamiliar tongue is quite a thrill.

*

“I’m sorry.” Dorian says, as the Bull kisses the top of his back. “I thought I could fix this, but nothing works.”

The Bull hums, lips against his shoulder blade.

“I can’t give you back your tongue. I can’t give you anything.”

“Parshaara. Asit tal-eb, kadan.”

Dorian turns, and the Bull rests his chin on his shoulder.

“Was that last one a new address? Does it mean ‘handsome’? ‘Clever’?”

The Bull hums again, leans in to kiss Dorian’s jaw. His hand loops around Dorian’s body, gentle against his chest.

“I suppose you won’t be able to tell me until you can speak again,” Dorian sighs, but relaxes into the shape of the Bull. “I’ll find a way. That, or I’ll just have to learn to appreciate your filth in Qunlat.”

The Bull, in his very distracting way, doesn’t let him think about it for the rest of the night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Esaam ataas shokra = “glorious struggle can be found within” aka “it’ll be fun to fight about it”
> 
> Parshaara. Asit tal-eb = “enough. it is to be” aka “don’t worry, what happens happens”


	52. giggly kiss

The hole in the roof and wall is weeks repaired, but there’s still a draft that chills the room. The fire keeps it at bay, and the cocoon of warmth within the blankets keeps even Dorian from grousing about it.

Indeed, under the Bull’s weight and the blankets both, Dorian can’t find it in himself to complain, not on a morning where Bull braved the morning cold to fetch food, and since they ate their fill they’ve done nothing but kiss and chatter, bodies warmed and flushed cheeks pressed occassionally to cool pillows.

“Do you think we’d be missed if we stayed here all day?” Dorian asks, peppering kisses along the Bull’s jaw.

“Nah,” the Bull says, and Dorian smiles at the indulgence. “If they want us, they’ll come find us.”

“And then we can pretend we’re not in.”

“Except we’re gonna need to piss eventually, and someone thinks chamber pots are barbaric.”

“They are!” Dorian scoffs, exposing his neck to the Bull’s nuzzling.

“They don’t have many dwarven-crafted private privvies in the south.”

“I’d noticed,” he sighs, and kisses the Bull on the mouth. It’s slow and languid, a rare unrushed day with no plans that can’t wait for tomorrow. “We’ll just have to piss out of the window.”

The Bull laughs. “Who’s barbaric now?”

“It’ll be fine, the window looks out over the cliff side, nobody will know.”

“I’ll know,” the Bull mutters, kissing down his neck to Dorian’s sternum. “How are you going to convince me to keep your terrible pissy secret?”

Dorian giggles and spluttered, not quite as indignant as he intended. “Don’t call it that!”

The Bull’s laugh rumbles in the minute space between them, then he’s kissing Dorian again, and he’s shaking with residual giggles thinking about how absurd it is; that he finds himself here in a qunari’s bed, talking about pissing out windows, and not wanting to be any place else.


	53. more pregnant bull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pretty please can we have more Dorian adoring pregnant Bull?

The Bull ends up the size of a small house, of course. Dorian was rather expecting that, given the scale of him before this whole situation arose, but it doesn’t keep him from marvelling at the great swell of the Bull’s belly as he dozes.

“’M awake, y’know,” the Bull murmurs, peering at Dorian with his lone eye.

“How are you feeling?”

Sick, he would venture. Sore, swollen, frustrated at being well beyond being able to train his Chargers, or even walk without waddling.

“I’m fine, kadan.”

Dorian hums, unconvinced, but climbs onto the bed anyway. The Bull huffs out a breath as Dorian lays both his hands on the expanse of grey flesh, thumbs the dark purple line descending from the Bull’s navel.

“You look about ready to burst.”

“Stitches says weeks yet.”

Dorian lowers his mouth and kisses the swell of the Bull’s stomach, lingers there against the warm flesh. The Bull lifts a hand and squeezes the back of his neck, encouraging. Dorian rest his head there, smiles to himself as he thinks their child, safe for now, the Bull’s entire being given to protecting, nurturing.

“Well, soon enough this whole thing will come to fruition. Not long, amatus.”


	54. sixty nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adoribull Prompt Sunday :can I ask you adoribull 69 sex?

Dorian on his back on the bed, and the Bull curved over his body - easier like this, and perfect, the way the Bull’s cock hangs full and hard, just so Dorian can take him into his mouth, close enough that the Bull pushes at his throat with every shift of his hips. 

The Bull is so careful, still lifting away, stroking Dorian’s thigh when he gags, though he can’t imagine it sounds anything other than enthusiastic to the Bull’s ears. Still, to be so accommodated, to be so prioritised, even in this, has Dorian’s heart thundering against his ribcage.

The Bull’s mouth is busy at his own cock, taking him to the root and sucking hard, hollowing his cheeks and dragging himself back, Dorian’s hips lifting to chase the sensation, the smooth swirl of his tongue, the wet slide of his glans against the roof of the Bull’s mouth.

It has them uncharacteristically quiet, no words exchanged, only the sordid sucking sounds, the wet gasping for breath, the slickness of skin on skin. They don’t speak, but what the Bull says as his fingers curl into the meat of Dorian’s thighs, horns rubbing against Dorian’s thighs as he lifts them; _I’ve got you_ and _kadan_ and Dorian thinks, hopes, prays:  _I love you back_.


	55. no answer would be enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> adoribull prompt sunday: Dorian has questions, a lot of questions that won't be answered until the Inquisitor returns from the Storm Coast accompanied only by some Qunari named Hissrad.

Dorian sees the Bull’s horns in the distance, and all is well, for a moment. He’s safe, and he’s coming back.

Alone. He’s alone. The Chargers, the lieutenants that he took with him, none of them proceed or follow him. Dalish and Skinner, Stitches and Rocky and Grim, Krem, they’re gone.

The rest of the Chargers, twenty or more of them here to greet them back, begin to talk and then shout and then cry out. From somewhere, he hears Sera swearing, voice pitches high and rising.

Dorian is carried forward by the bustle, until he’s face to face with the Bull and the Inquisitor. It’s the latter that makes Dorian’s stomach lurch, the firm set of his jaw, the determined lines of his face.

“What have you done?” Dorian takes the Inquisitor by both the shoulders and shakes him. He can feel bile rising in his throat. “What did you _do_?”


	56. tiny hands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the kink meme: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/14591.html?thread=61187327#t61187327

The Bull hums as he sharpens his axe, and Dorian sits in his bed carefully painting his nails black, with a batch of freshly mixed dye. Dye that has been sitting on the edge of the Bull's washbasin for more than a month, joined slowly by various other pots of brushes. Dorian doesn't mention it. He'll tidy them away, take them back to his own room. At some point.

Setting his axe down, the Bull rises and stretches, making a show of his arms over his head, and the steady pat of his feet across the rug-covered floor.

“Let me help.”

Dorian very nearly scoffs; _“I've managed this fine on my own before,”_ he'd say, or _“your hands are much too big for the task at hand.”_ Except he knows the latter to be untrue, having watched the Bull darn socks with a needle, and the former is of no relevance to the Bull's offer.

So instead, Dorian pats the bed and lets the Bull settle with him. The Bull takes the small lid of the pot, such a delicate little thing between his massive fingers, and Dorian offers his unpainted hand. The Bull paints his little finger first, swiping his nail with the brush, carefully covering the nail.

“Hm,” Dorian sounds, pleased and only a little surprised. The Bull chuckles, a rumbling thing from his chest. He paints Dorian's nails so carefully, not smudging a bit.

“Your hands are so small.”

“What?”

“Tiny hands, kadan.”

Dorian laughs. “Bull, I'm tall. For a human, anyway. I'm very much proportional, I assure you my hands aren't small.”

“Look,” the Bull says, and takes Dorian's hand into his, palm to palm. Dorian's fingers barely reached the first knuckles of the Bull's digits.

“Oh.”

It's not as if Dorian hasn't been aware that the Bull's hands are large—he's had them upon him, after all. He's had them wrapped around him, had those fingers inside him, but seeing them like this really puts the difference in their size into perspective.

The Bull lifts Dorian's hand and kisses over the heel, the palm, each of his fingertips. Engulfs Dorian's hand within his own, chuckling to himself as Dorian flexes his hand within the Bull's grasp.

“You're a strange man, you know that?” Dorian says, without heat.

The Bull grins, releasing Dorian's hand with one last kiss to the palm.

“My turn,” he says, wiggling his fingers in Dorian's direction.

“Really?”

“Uh huh.” He passes the brush to Dorian, offers his hand to him. Dorian heaves a put-upon sigh, but he's smiling as he takes the Bull's huge hand in his own and gets to work painting his nails.


	57. dry heat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the kink meme: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15543.html?view=61475511#t61475511

As the dawn breaks and the temperature begins to climb, the forward team reaches camp and hurries to escape the unbearable daytime the Hissing Wastes has to offer. Night travel makes the most sense, when the desert is cooler and they're not likely to die of heat exhaustion after ten paces, but it throws everyone out of sync, moving through the night and sleeping through the day.  
  
"I'm starting to think I'm turning to sand," Dorian says, upending his boots outside the tent flap.  
  
The Bull grunts his agreement. He's known heat like this, but Seheron was a wet heat, full of jungle; as soon as you stepped onto the island, it was like being doused with hot water, but that's just about better than this dry, chaffing heat.   
  
"Still," Dorian says, stripping away the layers of his armour and clothing, "at least it's not cold."  
  
The Bull grumbles as he scratches where scalp meets horn, feeling the skin flaking under his nails. He's mentioned it three times in his reports headed back to Skyhold, but there still hasn't been any horn balm in the supplies they're getting. Dorian frowns at him, sympathy shaping the expression.  
  
"Don't itch it."  
  
"Yes, Tama."  
  
Dorian rolls his eyes, and crosses the tent towards him, using the Bull's bare shoulder to help leverage him to his bedroll. Dorian's hand is unnaturally cool to the touch, and the Bull feels himself press into it.  
  
"Waste of your mana," he mutters, but lets Dorian shuffle between his spread knees and cup his cold hands around the Bull's neck.  
  
"Usually, yes, but we seem to have a steady lyrium supply out here, if nothing else."  
  
Slowly Dorian works his hands along the Bull's neck, his face, until he reaches his temples, and slides upwards to press his magically cold hands to where the Bull's horns begin. The Bull groans, and instinctively reaches to hold Dorian's hips loosely in his huge hands.  
  
"Shit yeah."  
  
"Can't help the dryness, I'm afraid," Dorian sighs. "My skin is dry enough you could peel it off and use it as kindling."  
  
"That's an image, kadan."  
  
"It's all those Dwarven carvings in the ruins. They've inspired the poet in me."  
  
When the Bull is a little numb with the cold Dorian takes his hands away, dispelling the magic with flicks of his wrists that might just be for show. The Bull's horns don't itch any more, and Dorian looks pleased with himself.  
  
"Thanks."  
  
"You need only ask if you require my touch, Bull."  
  
The Bull leers up at him, raising his one good eyebrow.  
  
"I didn't mean _that_ ," Dorian huffs, but he's smirking. "Besides, I have no plans for filling every one of my orifices with sand, thank you."  
  
"Sounds kinky."  
  
"You're terrible," Dorian huffs, shamelessly fond.  
  
It's warm in the tent, only getting warmer as the sun rises in the sky, but bearable enough under shade to sleep through it. They settle naked on top of their bed rolls, waterskins within sleepy arms reach, and somehow even despite the heat they still end up touching, Dorian's back pressed to the Bull's side, his head rested on a pillowing bicep, and they sleep.


	58. dorian drinks from the well of sorrows instead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adoribull Sunday Prompt – Adoribull – The inquisitor forces Dorian to drink from the Well of Sorrows, since they didn’t want to drink it themselves and even less for Morrigan to do so.

“I am sorry, Pavus.”

The library has been empty for hours; even the tranquil must sleep sometime. Morrigan wears a woollen shawl pulled around her, and slips into the puddle of light in Dorian’s alcove.

“I assume if there was a way for me to give this to you, you’d have mentioned it?”

The voices - those strange, whispering voices that speak in a foreign tongue but he understands - are mostly quiet. He’s grateful for being able to pretend he’s still himself alone.

“There is no way.”

“Not even in bequeathment?”

“Not so far as I know,” she says, voice positively gentle. “Granted, I hadn’t been considering any method involving your death. I hadn’t thought you would, either.”

Dorian hums. He hasn’t, not really. But his thoughts have soured, the longer he’s sat alone with wine.

“I might ask,” she says, and he thinks, _I might answer_ , “why you didn’t put up more of a fight over this. You were so reluctant when the Inquisitor was fielding possibilities, but when he made his choice, you could have refused, surely?”

“I would have gladly let you drink from the well, Morrigan, but it would appear I made the fundamental mistake of giving myself things I could lose. I’d encourage you to defy the Inquisitor and see for yourself, but that would be terribly unkind on your son.”

Morrigan doesn’t say anything, and the voices stir, murmur, and then settle again.

—

Emptying his mind is no harder. In fact, Dorian might have been able to pretend he was no different, if not for the fact he knew that he was bound to the whim of another person. An elven god, even. It made him feel rather sick, however he thought of his _master_.

Or if dreaming weren’t different now. Words he understands but feel clumsy on his tongue, visions of places strange but familiar. 

“You gonna stand there all night? Kinda creepy.”

The Bull lifts the covers and Dorian slips under them, against his side. They haven’t talked in days; Dorian has been hiding in the library, and the Bull gave him space. His voice is soft now, sleepy. He wraps his arm around Dorian as he settles against the Bull’s side, throws an arm over his chest and sighs into his shoulder.

“You wanna talk to me?”

“Does refusing preclude your company tonight?”

“Nah, never. We’ll just sleep, if you want.”

“Please.”

“Alight. I’ve got you, kadan. Sleep.” 

Dorian doesn’t have to wonder about what lurks in the quiet of his mind now, with the Bull’s heartbeat so close, his massive chest rising and falling, the stroke of his hand along Dorian’s back.


	59. a slow kiss

The Bull has been away from Skyhold for near a month, and Dorian has been sleeping in the Bull’s empty room for a week, because apparently that is the kind of man he’s become.

He means to go back to his room before the Chargers are due back, order a change of the Bull’s sheets for good measure. Better for the Bull to think he’s capable of a small act of kindness than self indulgent sentiment.

Of course then, the Bull arrives at Skyhold earlier than anticipated. The early hours of the morning, when Dorian is stirred awake by the Bull’s deliberate movements around his room, removing his pack and his boots.

“You’re back,” Dorian mutters into the pillows.

“And you’re here.”

Maybe Dorian wouldn’t find himself smiling, blushing, toes curling under the covers if the Bull didn’t sound so impossibly _fond_.

“Your room was closer after a night of drinking,” he mutters. A weak excuse, seeing as he’d not even complained about his hangover like he usually would. He could pretend, but it’s all rather a pointless endeavour here, this place with the Bull.

The Bull sits heavily on the edge of the bed and leans over, smoothing a hand down the sheets, down Dorian’s side. Dorian lifts his head out of the pillows and turns enough to see the Bull in the dim light of a banked fire, takes in a familiar scarred face, as intact as he last saw it. Perhaps he has the Maker’s ear, after all.

He eases onto his back and the Bull leans into his space, hums with contentment as he kisses Dorian. The Bull smells of sweat and dirt and elfroot - so there’s probably at least one part of him bearing a new mark - and Dorian breathes it in, savours it in the place it’s meant to be, the way the Bull’s smell becomes the one of them together.

Strange, he thinks, to have worried that the Bull might know this to be important, that it matters to him.

Dorian braves the chill of the morning air and wriggles his arms out of the blankets to wrap them around the Bull’s neck. Gently, lazily, he deepens the kiss; coaxes the Bull’s mouth open, slips his tongue against a scarred bottom lip, pulls him in close.

The Bull barely breaks the kiss to wriggle out of his trousers and under the sheets, to slip between Dorian’s waiting legs, to press them together, to kiss where Dorian exposes his throat for him, behind his ear, along where the muscles strain, where the Bull breathes deeply in his scent, too.

“Missed you too,” the Bull says quietly, and lets Dorian take his mouth again for another lingering kiss.


	60. a confession

The soft purple glow of the crystal, where it’s balanced on the Bull’s chest. Then there’s the sound of Dorian’s voice, sated and breathy.

“If you’d asked,” he says, and sighs. The rustle of sheets, whatever fine cotton and satin Dorian is tangled in. “If you’d have asked me to stay, I would have.”

“Yeah,” the Bull murmurs. His chest aches. “I know.”


	61. shovel talk gone wrong

This isn’t the first of the Bull’s fucks he’s had words with, and won’t be the last. Mostly it’s been about not getting attached.

First time he’s needed to worry about the reverse, and way too late. Not that he could have stopped the Chief falling for Pavus. Not that he’d want to dictate that, even if he’s - to put it lightly - not thrilled about the object of Bull’s affections.

Pavus is suspicious from the moment Krem beckons him over to their table.

“This isn’t personal,“ Krem starts without preamble, because really he has nothing beyond the usual Tevinter stuff against the guy, but he’s pretty sure he spells bad news for the Chief. Qunari don’t do romance, don’t do feelings like this, and he knows that the Bull is _sensitive_ , in his way. A way that led him to lose an eye for a stranger.

“Sounds like the sort of thing one might couch a very personal statement in.”

Stitches muffles a laugh.

“We care about the Iron Bull,” Krem says. “We’re his men, and he’s our–”

“–Mother,” Dalish murmurs, and Stitches laughs again.

“ _Kaffas_ ,” Krem hisses at them. Bunch of fuckers, voting he lead this and then undermining the process as soon as he starts. “Look, if you fuck him over, I can’t promise that Skinner won’t stab you, so best for everyone that you treat him–”

The moustache exaggerates Pavus’ confusion almost comically.

“Don’t hurt him.”

Pavus huffs a laugh. “I never thought the Bull so easily affected. Does every barmaid you cross paths with get this talk?”

“You’re not just another barmaid, are you?”

“Hardly,” Pavus puffs himself up. A pompous git, even in this. “But I can’t see how being the best lay your boss has ever up to this point had imbued me with any particular power to wound him.”

An awkward silence falls over the table.

Pavus rises from his seat, an air of the unaffected about him, even though redness colours his cheeks.

“Whatever this was about, you needn’t worry. I always leave him just as he was before I’ve had my way with him.”

They watch him leave. He doesn’t look back.

“Oh noooooooo,” Dalish moans when the door to the Rest has swung shit behind Pavus, a second before Krem puts the pieces together. 

_Vishante kaffas_.

“Sorted, then,” Rocky says.

“Are you stupid?” Skinner glares at him, “this is much worse.”

Krem has to agree.


	62. a frightened kiss

“Kadan,” the Bull says, breathing in as Dorian breathes out, taking his breath, holding it within him, as if that could save him. “Come back in one piece.”

“I shall, amatus,” Dorian says. Unsure.  

A thing the Bull shouldn’t ask of him, and yet-

“Promise you’ll come back. _Please_.”

A promise he can’t make, this the Bull knows. Dorian’s breath shudders out of him, and still, he kisses the Bull again.

“I _promise_ , Bull.”


	63. blood/sand

The Bull’s heartbeat still pounds in his ears as he catalogues it; which stains are Ventori, what has sluiced from his axe in motion. It’s over, they’re all standing, and something is _wrong_.

“A rather sloppy attempt on us, I think,” Dorian says, breathing laboured. The Bull almost misses it over the rush of his own blood in his ears, the gurgle in each breath.

Dorian falls to his knees, spitting red into the sand.


	64. a fantasy

“You want to watch, don’t you?” the Bull says, grinning a they come within sight of the camp.

_Yes,_ Dorian thinks. _Yes, yes, Maker yes._

Whether or not the Bull’s offers are serious, or just a tease, Dorian can hardly say _yes I want to watch you bathe_.

He thinks about it, though. He’s seen enough of the Bull to fuel this his thoughts, in the brief time alone in the tent they share.

So Dorian imagines the shape of him, the barrel chest and the fat stomach and the arms that could lift him like he weighed nothing, probably, and slips his hand into his smalls and strokes himself.

Thinks of the Bull under a waterfall, wet, _glistening_ , and has to bite the heel of his hand to disguise the moan he makes.

Takes himself out of his leggings, so he can stroke himself with a spit-slicked hand, as he thinks about the Bull spreading soapy lather over himself; considers only briefly that the setting has changed from waterfall to generic bathhouse in the space of a few dozen strokes.

This fantasy Bull, with muscles and flesh wet and glittering, cock long and hard in his fist, balls huge and heavy below, grinning, laughing, stroking, and _fuck_ –

Dorian spills over his hand, lips pressed together hard, his moan a low rumble kept in his chest. He wipes his fingers idly on a rag and thinks that the next time they find themselves at a stream to bathe in, there would be no harm in taking a studious look. For the sake of curiosity, nothing meant by it, of course.

His traitorous cock twitches weakly at the thought.


	65. you're beautiful like this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

Somewhere above sleep, but not quite committed to waking, the Bull thrusts his hips lazily against where Dorian’s fist is closed around his cock.

He can feel the light of the day on his body, sheets thrown off the bed, feels the slide of Dorian’s hairy leg against his, the heavy weight of Dorian’s cock where it’s pressed against his side.

“You’re so beautiful like this,” Dorian murmurs, kissing his stomach, his chest, hand moving so slowly over him.

The Bull finds his lips turned up in a smile, eye still closed as he turns blindly towards his lover, who moves to kiss his shoulder, his jaw, his mouth.

“Beautiful,” he says again, when the Bull’s breath shudders against his lips.


	66. bruises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nsfw/non-con reference warning

He wakes to find a deep purple bruise on Dorian’s bicep, blossoming from elbow to shoulder.

Freemen, a bash with a shield that rattled Dorian’s bones. Dorian set a fire inside the man’s ribcage for it.

“Impressive,” he murmurs, tracing the shape of it, while Dorian laughs into his bedroll.

*

Bruises in the shape of his fingers on Dorian’s hips, visible even in the guttering shadow of candlelight where he lays spread out on the bed.

His cock buried in Dorian, pulling him back hard against him over and over, doing as bid, as begged.

“Shit,” he begins, frowning as his fingers brush the fingermarks. Dorian hums, and pulls him close to kiss him.

*

Dorian’s wrist ringed in an ugly bruise, come up overnight as his arm rested on the Bull’s chest. A matching one on the other wrist when he looks.

A messenger to the Herald’s Rest, telling Dorian the Inquisitor was requesting his presence. Dorian returning to the Bull’s room late, smelling of wine.

“Kadan,” he says, his voice shaking with it. Dorian turns his face into the Bull’s shoulder and muffles a shaking sigh.


	67. touching through smallclothes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nsfw

A banquet is an ideal time to break out the Inquisition uniforms again. Dorian is never one to turn down the opportunity to see the Bull squeeze himself into the fitted trousers, after all.

Little did he know, but really might have guessed had he given it any thought, that the Bull was thinking on the merits of the trousers too.

Simple, compared to his usual attire. Not so intricate, nor so Tevene. A simple waistband, quite easy to surreptitiously undo and slip his hand into under the large banquet table, as they each hold two different conversations.

A pause, before his hand slips inside, to meet Dorian’s eye. The slightest of nods, because oh, he has thought about this.

The Bull’s big fingers stroke along his fast-filling cock, outlining the shape of him through his smalls. They silky because they’re comfortable, and the Bull has mentioned more than once how hot it is when his precome leaves a wet spot. Now, already, the Bull can run his fingers across the damp patch, making Dorian shudder.

He speaks with an Orlesian minister, an antivan tradesman, and a conversation with Cassandra before the Bull makes him come in his smalls. His breath catches, and he grabs up his wine glass and drinks deeply to disguise the moan he wants to make as his cock twitches his release.

The Bull, the disgusting, wonderful pervert, slips his hand inside his small then, gathers a fingerful of his come and withdraws his hand entirely. He takes the finger straight to his mouth and sucks Dorian’s come from it, moaning appreciatively.

“These little tarts are _delicious_ ,” he coos, and the Antivan opposite him launches into a conversation about the merits of Antivan pastry versus Orlesian.

Dorian will pretend to be annoyed at being called a tart later, and the Bull will know his anger is feigned, but promise to make it up to him all the same.


	68. bad knee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nsfw

He ignores it, because he’s ignored it before. Because Dorian is hot and just a little needy tonight, back arched, ass out, taking the Bull’s cock like a champ.

The ankle needs rest too, but the knee hurts especially tonight.

But Dorian isn’t stupid.

“On your back,” Dorian says, pushing Bull away. “You should have said if your leg was hurting, I can ride you just as well.”

It’s better, Dorian sinking down onto his cock, moustache crooked as he rides him, until it’s not. The ache grows, until all he can think about is the mounting pain, instead of the beautiful Vint bouncing on his dick.

“Crap, Dorian.”

Dorian slows to a stop, and Bull can feel how close he is to coming.

“I’m sorry, kadan.”

“Hush.”

He leans back, finds the Bull’s bum knee and starts to massage heat into it. The Bull groans. 

“Better than sex? I should be offended.”

The Bull reaches for Dorian’s cock. “Let me-”

Dorian catches his hand and brings it to his mouth, kisses the palm.

“It’s alright, Bull. Let me take care of you.”

The heat spreads from his knee down his calf, and it’s _good_. Dorian’s body, too is good; his thighs around him, his ass squeezing purposefully around his cock.

“If you want me to stop and just tend the knee,” Dorian says, squeezing his hand and his ass at the same time. The Bull groans again.

“Just like that, kadan. It’s good, crap. You’re good.”

Dorian gentles him, touches his stomach tenderly as he massages his knee and squeezes him, just the slightest grind of his hips against the Bull’s. It’s fucking amazing.

The Bull comes inside him, gripping his thighs as Dorian holds his knee steady, heat rolling through the muscle like the waves of release.

Dorian lets him touch his cock then, a few strokes and Dorian comes too, over the Bull’s huge fist.

“Sorry about that,” the Bull says, as Dorian carefully dismounts. He stretches, then settles on the bed and pulls the Bull’s leg into his lap.

“You ought to be apologising for not telling me at the start your knee was hurting. Krem is going to kill me. ‘Oh sorry, your boss can’t train with you today, he hurt himself trying to fuck me’. Tell me next time.”

“I will.”

“You’d better,” Dorian says, and bend to kiss the Bull’s knee.


	69. self conscious

Three weeks out in the graves, and Dorian is utterly _charmed_ to discover the Bull’s hair grows in thick and wiry, black as onyx. He ought have realised it would, being more than passingly acquainted with other hair on his body, but his face is always shaved to stubble, and his head shaved away.

“This is quite a change of look,” Dorian says, amused as he reaches for the Bull’s head, where they’re sprawled in their tent of an evening, muscles aching from fleeing freemen and giants both.

The Bull flinches away with a grunt. Dorian’s chest knots with sudden embarrassment for what is apparently a misstep. The Bull glances at him, and tips his head back, as if to put it back into reach of Dorian’s hand, but Dorian withdraws it.

“Shit,” the Bull mutters, “sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Dorian says. “If you don’t want be me to fool with your hair, I shan’t.”

“Nah, you can if you want. It’s just weird, letting it grow out.”

Dorian hums. It hardly sounds convincing, even though the Bull is a masterful liar. But Dorian knows intimately the issue with bodies, with what one projects with them unto the world. He knows, recognises, what it is to not feel right in one’s own skin.

So Dorian doesn’t touch his hair, and they fuck anyway. If the Bull notices that Dorian almost makes to cradle his skull, to hold his face close as they kiss, only to stop short each time, he doesn’t say anything.

After, when the dappled evening has become a night of forest noise, the Bull idly runs his fingers against the short hairs at the nape of Dorian’s neck.

“I used to get teased, sometimes,” he says. Dorian tips his head up, looking at the Bull without moving from where he’s curled at his side. “Human hair is loads of colours. Sure, there’s stuff that shows up more in different places, but there’s loads of variety. Elves and dwarves, too.”

“Qunari are mostly white-haired,” Dorian says, following the Bull’s trail of thought.

“Yeah. Nine out of ten, maybe. So I got teased, and even the Tamaassrans would point it out. Something they’d make note of, and I always remembered that. Kind of like qunari who don’t have any horns; it’s not good, it’s not bad, but it’s noteworthy. Like an omen, sometimes.”

“I didn’t think the qunari were a superstitious folk.”

“We’re not really, but we’ve all got our things.”

Dorian sits up, so he can better look at the Bull. He chances a brush of his fingers at the short curls behind the Bull’s ear - he leans into the touch, smiling softly.

“So you don’t like it, the colour of your hair?”

“It’s not like that. People down here don’t really notice. A lot of Vashoth dye theirs. People aren’t that used to seeing qunari, but it’s not like the ones they do see are all white-haired.” He shrugs. “It’s just a stupid thing, kid shit.”

“It’s not stupid,” Dorian says, finding his voice has gone terribly soft and fond. He leans down to kiss the Bull, while his runs his fingers through the new growth of hair. “You look very handsome.”

“I’m always handsome.”

“True, but this is a new sort of handsome for you.”

The Bull chuckles, and pulls Dorian in close to kiss him again.

“Oh yeah? Wore my hair long before I got sent to Seheron. Maybe I should grow it again.”

Dorian smiles, tickled by the thought. The tension has bled out of the Bull, who lies there now just smiling easily, eye soft on Dorian.

“Perhaps you should. I could return in kind all the things you do to my hair.”

“Dirty,” the Bull murmurs, but Dorian rather thinks that the both of them are instead thinking of something much more gentle, and just as intimate.


	70. laundry night

“I’m going to kill you, you great brute!”

The threat’s clear enough, even for being muffled underneath the bedsheets.

“What was that?”

Dorian struggles to extract himself, so the Bull pins the sheet down either side of him.

“Get off!” Amazing how indignant he sounds, even through the sheets.

“You said I should just make the bed with you in it. I thought this is what you meant.”

“You great horned idiot, I will burn through these fucking sheets if you don’t let me out!”

The Bull relents, and puts on his best upset face as Dorian throws the sheets free. 

“These are my favourite sheets, Dorian.”

Dorian huffs, sending his unwaxed moustache flapping upwards. 

“Because they’re pink? They’re only pink because Sera put her tunic in with the washing.”

“They’re pretty.”

“You’re impossible,” Dorian says, even as he drags the Bull down into the tangle of sheets to playfully nip at his jaw.


	71. crystal sex

“Are you hard?”

“Yeah, Dorian. I’ve got a meaty sausage, hot and spicy for you.”

Dorian hopes his silence speaks volumes.

“If you ever use that phrase again I’m leaving you.”

The Bull laughs, deep and true through the crystal.

“You don’t want my big meaty sausage?”

“Are you even trying? I’m going soft, here.”

“Sorry. Guess I’m not as good at this without being able to see you. Your face, shit. The way you look when you’re getting worked up.”

“That’s what you have an imagination for.”

“Only so far that can take a guy. Some days I really miss your face, kadan.”

Dorian sigh, and rubs his thumb gentle along the crystal.

“I miss you too, amatus.”


	72. dancing together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt, what about the first time Dorian and Bull danced in public together? Could be at a formal event, in a tavern, or out in the courtyard somewhere.

“There is likely to be multiple occasions that call for dancing, after we attend the Winter Palace,” Josephine insists. A rare sight in the Herald’s Rest, but it’s not for drink. 

The tables are pushed back to clear a space, and the Inquisition’s company and close associates are mostly present. Vivienne declines the invitation to help with dancing lessons. Solas refused to attend.

It has got to the point in the proceedings where Cullen and Sera are reluctantly clasped together, shuffling around the floor to Maryden’s helpful music and Lace Harding’s instruction. Sera is refusing to let Cullen lead, and the Bull is pretty sure Josephine is enjoying this all a whole lot.

Good. Things have been hard work for her lately.

Dorian sits on a table, where he’s been drinking wine and holding a conversation with the Bull across the room consisting entirely of facial expressions and body language. The ‘Vint’s a shameless flirt, and Josephine looks at him right as he’s pushing his tongue into his cheek in a mime about sucking the Bull off later.

“Dorian,” her voice barely falters, though she must give him a look because Dorian waggles his eyebrows at her. “I trust you can dance the classics, yes?”

“Of course. What would schooling for Alti be without learning the dance? Makes for a good distraction from all the murdering that usually goes on at functions.”

Krem, somewhere at the Bull’s elbow, makes a low and halfhearted noise of disgust. Why’s he even here? Probably for the drink. The Bull turns slightly to look at him - his ears are still pink from his turn on the dance floor with Cassandra.

“Bull,” Josephine says. “Do you know the Classical Antivan Waltz? It’s quite the fashion in Orlais this season.”

“Sure.”

“If you and Dorian might demonstrate it, please.”

Dorian looks slightly taken aback, but gamely rises to his feet, and meets the Bull halfway with a flourish of his wrist.

“It surely can’t be too dissimilar to Tevene dances.”

“Think the Vyrantium Smooth, without the double step,” the Bull offers.

The Bull wraps his huge hand around Dorian’s waist, and takes Dorian’s hand in his other. Dorian’s hands are strong, fine-boned, with managed callouses from wielding a staff. He’s more used to the feel of them on his cock than against his own hand.

“Wherever did you learn to dance?”

Dorian’s grip at his bicep is firm, confident. No quibble about letting the Bull lead, though his size tends to force it. They find their footing in time to the lute, and begin to move.

“Here and there. Useful, in Orlais.”

“I’m sure many a Dowager took you for a turn. Think of the scandal amongst her friends!”

“Plenty of Lords, too. I’m sure you’ll get your share of proposals at the palace.”

Dorian hums, as they turn in time. They have an audience, but their attention moves between them and where Josephine is instructing Blackwall and Sera makes jokes about getting too close to his beard.

“I’m sure they’ll be excited to dance with the Inquisitor’s very own de-fang Magister. I shall have to talk a little of ritual sacrifice and slavery to keep them interested. It’ll be a dreadful affair; won’t you save me a dance for after? I ought to enjoy the night some.”

The Bull’s had one fitting for his outfit so far and things look good, as long as they loosen the collar. He imagines Dorian in his suit, imagines all that white and gold of Orlais reflected in Dorian’s grey eyes as they move on an imagined dance floor.

It takes him long enough to respond that Dorian’s smile falters. The Bull has no intention of letting Dorian down.

“Of course, big guy. I’ll save my best moves for you.”

Dorian smirks up at him as they turn again. 

“Promises, promises.”


	73. the villa

The proposal arrives on Dorian’s desk apropos of nothing, Josephine’s hand familiar and not unexpected. It covers everything; direction, where to send money, who to contact, who to trust. He sends a letter in thanks, and sets it into motion.

The villa is close to one of the border towns he’s met with Bull at in the couple of years since the Exalted Council, but far enough into Antiva proper to be of little to no interest to Tevinter. It’s set amongst orange groves and rolling hills, empty for a decade or more.

The caretaker is an old man who has been visiting each week to make sure the place is still standing and still locked up. Dorian doesn’t meet the owner for the exchange of money and deed; Josephine suggested herself as a intermediary, and he trusts Josephine.

It’s because he trusts Josephine that he pays the caretaker a sum for termination of employment, and takes the key from him. He seems happy to be rid of the job.

When Dian shows up a few moments later - a bearded dwarf woman with a letter bearing Cadash’s personal seal - he corroborates her information with Josephine’s instructions.

“You’ll be wanting a housekeeper, I figure,” she says, looking him up and down. “A gardener, too.”

“That won’t be necessary. I only need you to keep the place safe when it’s empty.”

“Alright. Let me know if you need anything else.”

The villa is mostly in good standing, though a decade of dust and dirt cover it. The ceilings are high and covered in cobwebs. The windows are large and grimy. The wood is ornately carved and dull.

Even in it’s neglect, as Josephine insisted he would, Dorian falls in love with the place.

The sunlight fills the empty rooms beautifully. A room upstairs offers a spectacular view of the hills. In a room near the back of the villa, there’s a very green and slimy looking pool.

He spends the rest of the day putting up wards at all the doors and windows, before he bunks down in his bedroll in a dusty room for the night.

He’s woken in the morning by the sound of voices.

Dorian takes his staff and creeps downstairs, peering out the dirty windows. There’s a group of youths lolling around the neglected foundation, laughing as they pack oranges into overflowing crates. He sets his staff at the door before he goes outside.

“Hey!”

“Don’t point your arrows at me,” Dorian says, as he picks his way down the path towards them, “you’re the ones trespassing on my property.”

Two of them are armed. He doesn’t suppose either has ever killed more than game before.

“This place is empty!” A young lad, instinctively hiding the oranges he’s holding behind his back.

“Clearly it’s not.”

“It has been for a long time, Serah,” a girl says, showing some sense as she gestures her friends to lower their weapons. “Seemed a waste for the fruit to go rotten.”

“Indeed. If you stay out of the garden from now on, you’re welcome to the trees in the rest of the orchard.”

She frowns art him. “What’s your price?”

“No price. It saves me the trouble of having to smell rotting fruit come the end of the harvest season.”

They’re still looking suspicious, but they take their crates and leave without incident.

He spends the morning exploring the grounds and the house again, checking his wards and extending them into the garden.

In the mid afternoon the Bull pushes open the gate, Dorian abandons the book he’s been not-reading at the algae-covered fountain and runs to him. He throws his arms around his neck as the Bull laughs, hugs him close.

The smell of him is distantly familiar; the dusty road, something faintly medical - his horn balm. Leather and sweat and citrus.

“So, this is our new house.”

“Don’t get too excited, you haven’t seen the state of it yet.”

“But it’s _ours_.”


	74. things you said when it was over

He sees Dorian by accident in a corridor of Halamshiral. No reason for them to even be in the same guest wing, except that Sera is closer to where the Chargers have been put up than wherever Dorian and and the rest of the dignitaries are.

Two years have good to him. His hair’s long enough now to tie back, but it’s pomped effortlessly instead. Same moustache. Same grey eyes, with a little more depth to lines at the corners.

“Bull!“ he says, laughs, smiles as they come to a stop, an ocean between them. “It’s good to see you.“

_I think it best that this ends here, don’t you?_

“Good to see you too, ‘Vint. How’s Tevinter treating you?“

“With it’s usual decadent awfulness. Are your men well?”

“All good. Ready to scandalise some Orlesians.“

”Oh, I’ve no doubt! We’ll have drinks later, see if we can’t help them.“

_After all, what were we but a poor decision, oft repeated?_

An arm span apart, an ocean still between them. The Bull’s never feared drowning.

“Sure, big guy. Come find me anytime.“


	75. things you said with too many miles between us

A soft purple glow, a huge empty bedroom. A breeze at the window, one glass of wine shattered on the marble floor, dark wine flowing slowly along the grout.

_“They wanted you dead?“_

“A great many of them do.“

_“But they were stopped.“_

“This time. A little bruising, I’ll wear a different robe for a few days.“

If he’d bled out on the floor of the Magisterium he’d never have seem Bull again. If he’d died today at the hands of an upstart magister, it would have bolstered the moderates they’re trying to swing for the Lucerni, if only for a time.

The Bull listens to him say as much, injects prompts at all the right points, makes all the right noises, like anyone offering an ear and no solutions.

Dorian sobs into his wine glass.

“Please, tell me to leave. I don’t want to be here, I can’t do this.“

_“Stay.“_

“You want me to die, Bull? I could, at any moment. They only need be a little smarter than they were today.“

_“I don’t want you to die, I’m worried about you all the time.”_

“Then tell me to come home, please. I’ll come home to you, just tell me to.“

_“Don’t make me ask you for something you can’t give, kadan.“_

He throws his second wine glass at the wall, where it shatters in a spray of glass and red; Dorian sinks to the floor with the crystal cradled in his hands, sobbing. Knows full well that the Bull is right, that he knows the regret that will plague him when he wakes in the morning, this desperate misery all forgotten to drunken melodrama.

“Oh, amatus,. I miss you terribly.“

 _“I miss you too. When you’re really ready - if you wake up tomorrow and you’re really ready to give it all up, I’ll meet you at the border and we’ll never look back at Tevinter._ “

All the room has is purple light, a haze of tears caught in his eyelashes, the scent of red wine in the air.

“I will come home to you.“

They both know it won’t be tomorrow.


	76. the things you said when you thought i was asleep

The Bull usually sleeps still and quiet, not even breathing overloudly. Tonight, he bears a bear wound on his sided packed with herbs and wrapped tightly in linen, and even in sleep he’s restless. 

They’ve long since given up pretence, and now their bedrolls are usually pushed together, collection of blankets shared. Dorian, it would seem, has become used to the still solidity of the Bull, that every little jostle and movement rouses him.

The first time, he grumbles and falls back to sleep, arm pillowed on the Bull’s arm. The second time the Bull pulls the arm away and he has to turn over, almost losing the haze of sleep.

The third time, the Bull turns only his uninjured side a little, taking the blankets with him.

“Fasta vass.“

There’s no response, and the Bull’s breathing settles. It’s better that he sleeps, even if he’s going to be a nuisance with it. Dorian pries enough blanket back that his feet won’t freeze and settles against the Bull’s back.

“It’s a good thing I love you,“ he murmurs, and falls asleep, never knowing of the Bull’s weary, sleepy smile.


	77. things you said when we were the happiest we ever were

Corypheus is dead, and Skyhold is in a state of celebration. In the Herald’s rest Dorian has found a seat on the Bull’s lap, joining in with raucous drinking songs from his perch, the Bull’s hand warm and steadying on his thigh.

Somehow they survived. Somehow he has this.

Dorian turns his chin up, presses a kiss to the Bull’s jaw, coaxing him close.

“Are you ready for a little private revelry?“

“Let me just finish this drink,“ he says, lifting his tankard. Dorian puts his hand on his arm, laughs against his skin.

“There’s no rush, amatus. We’ve all the time in the world.“

Even if he can only hope for it to be true, hope can be enough for tonight.


End file.
